


five times Grantaire wanted everyone to go on a road trip, and the one time they actually did

by sungmemoonstruck



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, M/M, Multi, Road Trips, Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungmemoonstruck/pseuds/sungmemoonstruck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was initially suggested at Courfeyrac’s birthday party (“Extravaganza,” he would correct), in the midst of the slurred ramblings of a very drunken painter, whose other slurred ramblings in the heat of a party (“Extravaganza.”) generally weren’t taken very seriously.</p><p>“We should go on a road trip!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. all will be well by the gabe dixon band

It was initially suggested at Courfeyrac’s birthday party (“ _Extravaganza_ ,” he would correct), in the midst of the slurred ramblings of a very drunken painter, whose other slurred ramblings in the heat of a party (“ _Extravaganza._ ”) generally weren’t taken very seriously.

“We should go on a road trip!”

Bahorel’s enthusiastic holler of a reply caused everyone else at the club, even the people outside of their tight-knight group, to holler back. In less than a minute, the entire building was chanting, “ _Road trip! Road trip!_ ” and Enjolras—the most sober and certainly the most quiet (which wasn’t saying much, as a circus would have been a more peaceful scene than this)—could only watch with amusement as the thought of a road trip sparked something bright in his friends’ eyes. They gathered round to plan out their hypothetical journey, and Bahorel unhelpfully assisted their cause by climbing on the table, for no apparent reason.

“Where would we go?” Musichetta asked.

“Everywhere!” Courfeyrac cried. “Nowhere!”

“We’ll take the one less traveled by!” Jehan shouted gleefully, stumbling into Feuilly. “No—even _less_ than that! Frost would roll in his grave, he’d be so jealous.”

Enjolras smirked, grabbing onto Jehan’s arm as he lost his balance whilst standing again, this time almost toppling over Marius. “Are you suggesting we pave our own roads?”

“Dunno. Am I?”

“Guys!” Éponine managed to clamber upon the table and stand up without much fail, despite the fact that she was so plastered, she’d mistaken Bahorel for Cosette. “Guys guys guys guys,” she yelled over the blaring techno music, “we should be _road workers!_ ”

Bahorel hollered, sparking the hollers of the rest of the bar once again. Even Enjolras smiled and raised a glass, shaking his head.

Behind him, Combeferre nudged his shoulder and whispered, “Who d’you think will be the first one out?”

“Oh, definitely Bossuet. Look at him.” Enjolras gestured to Bossuet across the bar, ball dancing with an invisible partner. He had remarkable form for someone on his fourth drink, but he appeared so dazed that he looked like a puppet swaying by only its strings.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Combeferre remarked, glancing over to their friends’ makeshift dance floor atop the table. “Marius looks like he’s about to pass out.”

“Marius always looks like he’s about to pass out when he’s dancing with Courf. In fact, we should probably pull him away before Courfeyrac claims him as his dance partner for when he once again decides that he’s a competitor on _Dancing with the Stars_ and has to perform the perfect mamba.”

“Oh, I don’t know. His Paso Doble _was_ very good last time. Almost got a perfect thirty.”

“Marius fell twice. I couldn’t give them a perfect score for obvious mistakes like that.”

“But his spirit was in the right place. His spirit danced like an Amazon.”

“It’s called _Dancing with the Stars_ , not _Dancing with Really Great Morale_.” Enjolras snickered into his drink. “And ‘danced like an Amazon’? How much have you had tonight?”

“Not nearly as much as Courfeyrac would like, otherwise I would be the one getting humped by the birthday boy instead of Marius’ poor soul.”

“AHEM.” Enjolras and Combeferre turned to Joly, who bobbed his head in time with the music overhead and carried four different drinks in his arms. Each bottle looked ready to tumble out of his grasp, but he clutched them protectively like newborn baby kittens. “I HAVE COME BEARING AN ORDER FROM THE BIRTHDAY BOY.”

“WHY ARE YOU YELLING,” Combeferre yelled back.

“I DON’T KNOW. THERE’S THIS RINGING—I DON’T THINK IT’S A GOOD SIGN OF ANYTHING.”

“WELL WE’LL FIND OUT TOMORROW.”

“What does the birthday boy want?” Enjolras asked.

“HE SAYS HE REQUIRES YOUR ASSES, OR YOUR ‘GROVE THANGS,’ WITH WHICH TO SHAKE. HIS WORDS, NOT MINE.” He shrugged, and for a second, one of his bottles almost slipped out of his arms, but Enjolras caught it before it could smash to the ground. Joly tucked it back under his arm tenderly. “THANK YOU. I HAVE TO GO NOW.”

“HEY, WHOSE DRINKS ARE THOSE?” inquired Combeferre.

As Joly walked off back to the dance floor, to slide between Bossuet and the space dancing with him, he shouted back, “I DON’T KNOW.”

Enjolras and Combeferre grinned to keep from laughing.

“I suppose I’m the only one sober enough to see straight, so I’ll be taking everyone home?” Enjolras said. “Courfeyrac sure knows how to throw a party.”

“ _Extravaganza_ ,” corrected Grantaire, wrapping his arms around Combeferre’s waist. He nuzzled Combeferre’s armpit. “What say you two?”

Combeferre reached around to pat the top of Grantaire’s head. “What say us about what?”

“A road trip. Discovering the unknown.  Exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civiliza—wait, that’s not right.” Grantaire spun around Combeferre, throwing an arm around each Enjolras’ and Combeferre’s shoulders. “Anyway, sounds fun, yeah?”

“No,” Enjolras stated.

Grantaire scowled. “Come _on_. Don’t be like that.” He stepped closer to Enjolras, cradling the side of his face. Enjolras would have found himself gagging at the potent stench of booze if he wasn’t so accustomed to it already. “Live a little. Be the Thelma to my Louise.”

“They both drove off a cliff.”

“Party pooper.”

“ _Extravaganza_ ,” Enjolras smirked at the roll of Grantaire’s eyes. “You’re drunk.”

“And you’re not. It’s annoying.” Frowning, Grantaire slid his hand from Enjolras’ cheek, glaring at Enjolras’ forehead. This would be one of Grantaire’s more pouty drunken nights, Enjolras realized. “Is that a no?”

“Is what a no?”

“Never mind.” Indeed, Grantaire’s pout tonight almost outdid the ones of small dogs in sad commercials. He stalked off back to the dance floor, shuffling to the music and gulping down shots with every beat of the base in the background. Combeferre slipped a hand on Enjolras’ shoulder, pulling him out of the strange, disproportionate state Grantaire often him left him in.

“Come on, Len Goodman. Let’s go shake our groove thangs.”

Enjolras snorted. He followed Combeferre to the dance-tables, where Courfeyrac and Jehan greeted them by putting them in a dance sandwich, one that didn’t falter even when some of the workers of the club tried to calm them down.

Everyone woke the next morning to a feeling that closely resembled death. The road trip was mostly forgotten.

 

Mostly—only one in their group had salvaged the idea.

The second mention of it was at the Café Musain for a meeting of their activist group, the ABC. For the most part, everyone was significantly sober.

Everyone except for the idea’s savior, of course.

“We should go on a road trip.”

Eleven pairs of eyes turned from Enjolras to Grantaire, who shrugged and took another sip from his bottle, moving his attention back to the aimless doodles on his sketchpad. “Don’t look at me like that. Last time I mentioned it, you all were _more_ than willing to oblige. You danced on tables, you were so thrilled.”

“What does this have to do with anything I was just talking about?” Enjolras demanded, glaring at him, although it was unclear if his glare was from Grantaire’s abrupt suggestion in the middle of Enjolras’ bouts of revolution or if it was just Enjolras’ default expression for whenever he involved himself with Grantaire’s existence.

“It doesn’t. Which is precisely why I brought it up.” Grantaire kicked his feet up on the coffee table, accidentally knocking over one of Combeferre’s books. “Figured a change of subject would be pleasant.”

 “We don’t have time for this. We’re in a _meeting_.”

“You’re in a café, not the White House. There’s a three-year-old’s beautiful scribbling on the back wall behind you.”

“Grantaire—”

“What kind of road trip?” Courfeyrac asked, earning himself one of Enjolras’ most prized glowers. Courfeyrac was more than used to Enjolras’ moods, however, and simply waved him off.

“Is there more than one kind of road trip?”

“Of course,” Jehan said. He sat on the floor, squeezed between Éponine and Cosette, as they allowed him to draw flowers and poetry onto their jeans. “There’s the road trip for the sake of tourism, the road trip for love.”

“The road trip for self-discovery,” Cosette said.

“The road trip for a new beginning,” Éponine said.

“The road trip to run away,” said Bossuet. He took a large bite out of a piece of coffee cake and added while chewing, “The road trip just for the fun of it.”

“Or the road trip in which one person has to be across the country in only so much time, and everyone else basically tags along for the ride, a la _Little Miss Sunshine_ ,” mentioned Musichetta.

“Just take your pick,” Jehan said.

“All of them,” said Grantaire after a moment of thought. “None of them. I don’t know.”

“Perhaps it’s that kind of road trip, then,” Combeferre said, not looking up from his books, most definitely to ignore the look of exasperation Enjolras threw at him. “The kind you figure out on your way there.”

“On your way where?” piped up Feuilly.

Grantaire leaned forward, meeting Enjolras’ eyes and grinning against their cool gaze. “There’s only one way to find out.”

 

The third mention was a week later, and this time, Grantaire was nowhere in sight.

“A road trip _does_ sound nice,” Cosette mused. She sat in the park with Marius, Musichetta, Jehan, Feuilly, Éponine, and Gavroche; there hadn’t been such a lovelier day as this one in weeks, as if the prospect of exams and papers due and overall anxiety had not only dampened the student body, but the weather of the past few weeks as well. Cosette chewed on the cap of her pen as she watched Éponine and Feuilly chase Gavroche around the park, and her other hand played in Marius’ hair while he tried to doze off in her lap. Jehan and Musichetta sat back-to-back against each other across from Cosette and Marius, studying for their own respective classes. They both looked up at exactly the same time when Cosette spoke. Marius cracked an eye.

“Think about it,” she went on, bookmarking her place in her philosophy textbook. “A few weeks with nothing to worry about, just us and the road and the world at our feet. We could go _anywhere_.”

“I’ve been ‘ _anywhere_ ,’” Musichetta said. “Sometimes it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“We haven’t all been _anywhere_ before, though, not together. Not with Bossuet and Joly.”

Musichetta gave her a wistful smile. “Touché.”

“It _would_ be nice to be able to relax.” Marius shut his eyes again and hummed, content, at Cosette’s fingers twirling around his hair. Between school and the arguments with his grandfather, he hadn’t truly slept for the past month—no one in their little group had. Cosette placed a gentle kiss to Marius’ forehead, noting the restlessness of his feet, the strained look in Jehan’s and Musichetta’s eyes, and the dark circles she would see beneath Éponine’s and Feuilly’s. Even the marble of Enjolras’ statue had begun to crack, though he would never admit it or let it get the best of him. God knew she didn’t look or feel much better.

Gavroche ran over to them, Feuilly and Éponine close behind. Marius sighed, giving up on his nap, and sat up. He greeted Gavroche by messing up the boy’s mess of blond hair and handing him a bag of chips.

“Worn out, I see,” he said as Éponine sat down and Feuilly snatched up a box of cigarettes by Musichetta’s feet.

“Gav’s got every bit of our energy combined, I think,” Éponine said. Cosette handed her a Coke, half of which she downed in seconds. “What’d we miss?”

“Road trip,” Cosette grinned. “What do you think?”

Above them, Feuilly brought a cigarette to his lips, lightly heaving in the smoke. There was a glimmer of sweat against his thick brow. “Where to?”

“ _Anywhere_.”

“Huh.” Éponine laid her head in Cosette’s lap now, taking over Marius’ spot. There was sweat on her forehead as well; Cosette dabbed it away as she closed her eyes. “ _Anywhere_ doesn’t sound half bad.”

 

Another week passed. The fourth time it was brought up, there hadn’t been much segue into the topic—it simply just _happened_ , and everybody joined into the conversation as if this unbelievable idea was somehow believable.

“I’ve always wanted to see Yellowstone.”

“Oh, the Golden Gate Bridge!”

“The biggest ball of twine!”

“The Statue of Liberty!”

“We can see that now, dumbass. It's only three hours away.”

“Well, we can PRETEND we HAVEN’T.”

Éponine popped the cap off a wine cooler, sitting down on the arm of the couch. “We’d have to go _everywhere_ , you realize. There won’t be any half-assing this trip—we go everywhere, see everything, act like the most obnoxious tourists on the planet. Even the rest stops would be considered sight-seeing.”

“Fuck no, I am _not_ going inside _any_ rest stops,” Joly said, situating himself cross-legged so he could sit in a better position to massage Musichetta’s shoulders, while at the same time, give Bossuet a better position to massage his shoulders. Jehan sat in the armchair, the very top of their massage train, and unknotted the kinks in Bossuet’s back while stopping every so often to replace the daisy that had fallen out from behind Bossuet’s ear.

“It’s either that or pee in the forest,” Bahorel said, “where there are bears.”

“And lions,” said Cosette.

“And tigers,” said Éponine.

“Oh my,” Musichetta hummed happily.

Joly rolled his eyes. “I would gladly risk the bear.”

“Just so we’re clear,” spoke up Feuilly, guarding the case of wine coolers with Grantaire, “if we get attacked by a bear, I’m probably going to leave you all to die.”

“There’s no point in doing that,” said Grantaire from the recliner above him. “It would probably go after you before any of us because it could smell fear on you. ‘Feuilly’ translates roughly to ‘prime bear cuisine.’”

Feuilly flipped him off. “You’re a dick.”

“I could be worse. I could be a bear.” Grantaire laughed at the look on Feuilly’s face as Feuilly flipped him off again.

“What’s this about bears?”

Out of seemingly nowhere (although one could better assume that they’d come from the library rather than materializing from thin air), Enjolras and Combeferre stood at the open door of their apartment, watching their friends, as a whole, freeze upon their sudden appearance.

“If you all are trying not to look suspicious,” Enjolras said, “you are doing a terrible job and I highly suggest none of you go into acting as a career.”

“Fuck you, I was going to be the next Doris Day,” sneered Bahorel.

Combeferre kicked off his shoes, throwing his coat across the room. It landed on Éponine’s head. “Not that we don’t appreciate your company, but what are you doing here?”

“The same could be asked of you,” said Bossuet.

“We _live_ here.”

“A likely story.”

Courfeyrac’s voice emerged from the kitchen. “We’re contemplating a thing.”

“A very _intriguing_ thing,” Jehan nodded.

“What kind of _intriguing_ thing?”

“The kind of intriguing thing one contemplates,” Joly replied, and the laughter Bossuet had been holding in tumbled out.

In the back of his mind, Enjolras considered the idea that all of his friends had finally gotten so high or drunk that the majority of their brain cells had just vanished. This was a concept he considered quite frequently.

“If you all are gonna be assholes, you can leave.”

“Now, now.” Jehan stood up from the massage train, easing Enjolras’ coat off of his shoulders and placing it on the coat rack for him. “No need to be rude. We actually _are_ contemplating something of high importance.”

“Then why won’t anyone tell me what it is?”

“Because there’s a decent chance you won’t like it,” sighed Musichetta.

Enjolras glanced at them all warily. “Please tell me you’re not planning on making another waterslide in the Musain.”

“ _That was one fuckin’ time!_ ” Courfeyrac shouted.

“ _We almost got banned!_ ”

Courfeyrac leaned against the kitchen doorway, waving half a bagel at Enjolras. “We said we were sorry. And _you_ said you were over that.”

“WHO BUILDS A WATERSLIDE IN A CAFÉ—never mind.” Enjolras pinched the bridge of his nose, taking the calming breaths Jehan had once instructed him to do when his temper flared. He wasn’t one who necessarily needed anger management, but there were occasions when punching a wall happened to be the only thing that could find him peace. After the waterslide incident, he practically had to start paying Jehan for his counseling. “ _What_ are you planning?”

No one answered immediately. But someone had to be brave, and in that next moment, it turned out that Marius was the noble hero of them all.

“We want to go on a road trip.”

Enjolras blinked. “Is that all?”

“Well, you hadn’t seemed too happy about it before,” Cosette pointed out.

“We were having a meeting before. And you _did_ open with the waterslide incident. Anything after that sounds like a fucking wonderland.”

“Does that mean you’re in?” Éponine asked, the hopefulness in her voice spreading like wildfire across the faces of their group.

“Well—I don’t know. How serious about this are you? It’s not like we can just up and leave everything to travel across the country.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Grantaire said, eyes wide with eagerness, raising his bottle to Enjolras, “we _can_.”

“No, we can’t. Maybe you can, since you don’t do anything but drink and paint all day, the rest of us have school and jobs. Responsibilities, not that you know the meaning of the word.”

The eagerness in Grantaire’s demeanor faded, replaced by a scornful look. “‘Responsibilities: noun, plural; the state or fact of being answerable or accountable for something.” He took a swig from his bottle, grumbling the word “Asshole,” in a less than inconspicuous tone. “School will be over soon—”

“The semester’s over in a month. You’re planning like it will be over by tomorrow.”

“—and we can take time off of work—”

“Do you know how jobs work? You can’t just leave whenever you feel like it.”

“ _—that’s why the magical concept of vacation days exist—_ ”

“And what if some of us can’t afford vacation days? Éponine has to send money to take care of Gavroche—”

“—Éponine has plenty of money set aside—”

“—Not to mention trips cost a lot of money. Gas, food, and hotels don’t really come cheap, and you barely make ends meet as it is—”

“—I’m sorry, when did this turn into yet another round of Judging Grantaire: The Game Show?”

“I’m not judging you—”

“Sure fucking sounds like it. Maybe you’d like a piece of the action for once, hmm?” Grantaire swung his legs off of the arm of the recliner, standing up and pointing his preferred battle armor of a wine cooler in Enjolras’ face.

“R—” Jehan started, but Grantaire had already begun.

“Enjolras, so far gone in his delusions of a brighter tomorrow that he can’t even see the dim glow of the people _barely_ holding on today. How terrible it must be to live so high up, you can’t even see the people beneath your shoes—or maybe you don’t want to see them? After all, then you’d have to admit how much of a failure your precious causes are, or maybe even be forced to look at poor, desolate Grantaire and his pathetic, alcohol-induced life—”

“Grantaire, that’s _enough!_ ” Courfeyrac hissed, but Enjolras waved him off.

“No, it’s _fine_ ,” Enjolras snapped, his voice rising. “Don’t make him stop! See, as long as Grantaire gets in his quota of mockery, then he’s done his job right. As long as he makes a fool of himself and everyone around him, he can sleep peacefully at night, right? Or rather, maybe pass out on some park bench somewhere.”

“Oh, that’s rich!” Grantaire shouted. “See, even when Enjolras is pissed beyond comparison, he _still_ adds to the cause against oppression! Well, thank you, Apollo. It’s nice to know that even on my _park bench_ , I can shout as much as I want without being heard—you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

Combeferre jumped between them just as Enjolras swung at Grantaire. He and Bahorel backed Enjolras into the door despite Enjolras’ attempts to lunge out of his hold and slam Grantaire to the floor. Grantaire, held back by Courfeyrac, Jehan, and Éponine, screamed at Enjolras to come at him and tried to pry his way out of the many hands keeping him at bay. His wine cooler tumbled from his hands and smashed to the floor, and as he struggled to make a dive at Enjolras, he slipped on the drink and fell onto the glass. Cosette and Joly rushed to help him up. Blood from the cuts on his hands and arms dripped onto to the floor.

“Get out,” Enjolras seethed, wrenching himself out of Combeferre’s grip, while Bahorel still kept an uncertain hand on his arm.

“Fucking gladly,” Grantaire snapped back. He wiped the blood on his shirt and stormed out the door, Bahorel pulling Enjolras out of the way in case they tried to lunge at each other again.  Cosette and Joly hurried to the bathroom, grabbing bandages and rubbing alcohol, and then ran after him.

The silence swarming the room was horribly piercing. The waterslide incident suddenly sounded like the most splendid topic of conversation in the world.

Courfeyrac cleared his throat tentatively. “Enjolras—”

Enjolras held up a hand. “I have homework. Nobody cut themselves on the glass.”

A second later, the bedroom door slammed shut.

Grantaire didn’t come back.

 

(“Don’t you think you were being harsh last night?” Combeferre asked, leaning on the edge of Enjolras’ desk as he and Courfeyrac bounced a small rubber band ball back and forth.

“Oh, _I_ was being harsh?”

Courfeyrac caught the rubber band ball from the bed and threw it back to Combeferre. “You weren’t the only one. But you certainly didn’t help the situation.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes, sitting up from the essay that refused to be written, regardless of whether Combeferre had spent the past fifteen minutes fixing a calm, steely gaze upon Enjolras’ unyielding feign of ignorance. “Why does he even _bother?_ He doesn’t do anything but mock us, mock our causes. He drinks and complains and believes in nothing.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” Combeferre set the rubber band ball back beside the lamp. “He believes in things. Just not the same things you believe in.”

“Like what?”

Combeferre shrugged, far too nonchalant. “Perhaps you should ask him.”)

 

( _Please talk to him_ , read Cosette’s text, and regardless of the restrictions modern-day technological communications had, Grantaire could still hear the concern in her voice, probably because her tone in the five voicemails she’d left since the incident in Enjolras’ apartment had more than solidified its place in Grantaire’s head.

The phone vibrated. Grantaire sighed and slid the screen up, clicking the button to view the text.

 _Please talk to me_.

Looking down, Grantaire turned the screen away. He watched the city lights from his fire escape and drank till they looked like fireflies.)

 

As far as they were all concerned, the subject of the road trip was dead. They’d all accepted the fact that it hadn’t been more than a pipe dream and resigned themselves back to the reality of school and protests and Boston streets. No one talked about what could have been, where they could have gone, or the things they could have seen, and they dared not even mention Google, fearing that its mere presence would lead them to search the top thirteen best tourist attractions in the country.

If the very mention of it meant that Grantaire and Enjolras would try to murder each other again, then the rest of Les Amis were content with pretending that road trips did not exist.

That didn’t mean their efforts were successful.

The fifth time was, of course, an accident. Bossuet had been searching for his phone charger, buried somewhere at the bottom of his backpack. After three minutes of endless searching, he grunted and cleared a space on the table, dumping the entirety of the backpack’s contents across Combeferre’s books. To his luck, Bossuet had then found his phone charger in record time.

Everyone else found the book, _Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America’s Two-Lane Highways_.

Bossuet snatched the book back and shoved it into his backpack, but the damage was already done.

“I’d borrowed it before we decided against the—”

Joly’s hand slammed against his mouth, cutting him off.

 “Right.” Enjolras cleared his throat, glancing everywhere—the floor, the back walls, the ceiling, the windows; anywhere that wasn’t where his friends’ gazes were, where they would see the anger and shame he still felt over the incident with Grantaire, even though days had passed since then. He tried to get his mind back on track by talking of the government or their next protest or who was destroying what within society, but with every ideal came Grantaire’s voice in his head. It was as if Grantaire sat right in front of him, spewing out his chiding words every time Enjolras spoke.

Grantaire had ground such a place in their meetings that he didn’t even need to physically _be there_ for Enjolras to hear him.

For once, Enjolras found himself at a loss for words.

“That’s enough for today,” he heard himself say after a moment, and then the rest of his brain seemed to agree with his mouth and continue. “We’ll reconvene Thursday, alright?”

He didn’t wait for anyone’s reply. He was out the café doors in seconds.

 

Grantaire was used to being woken by the pounding on his door—it was his landlord’s preferred method of starting conversations.

What he wasn’t used to was finding someone that wasn’t his landlord on the other side of the pounding—especially someone like Enjolras.

His hangover hit him in a rush, and suddenly, Grantaire couldn’t recall a time when he wanted to crawl into a cave and die more in his life.

Enjolras shuffled on his feet, looking no more pleased than Grantaire at the subject of standing there. “We need to talk,” he said, stuffing his idle hands into his pockets. “Can I come in?”

Grantaire nodded faintly and stepped aside. He watched Enjolras take in the state of his apartment, the matted mattress in one corner of the room, the small kitchen covered in plates and old fast-food garbage in the other, and the paint splattered everywhere else, across walls and canvases, the floor and the ceiling. Of everything, the artwork sprawled out around the room was the most pleasant thing to look at, and even some of that—in Grantaire’s opinion, particularly of some his older pieces—was debatable.

“I’ve never seen your apartment before,” he heard Enjolras murmur.

Grantaire shrugged. “It’s not exactly the eighth wonder of the world. Cosette and Courfeyrac and Éponine have tried to keep it relatively clean, but as you can see, they haven’t been here in a few days.”

Enjolras looked down, kicking at the air between them. “You haven’t been answering your phone, Cosette says.”

“I’ve been… incapacitated.”

Enjolras glanced beside the bed, where an army of empty bottles lined his mattress, ready to fight with their glass shields and empty words. “I see.”

The floating noises of rush hour through the open window interrupted the silence that followed. Grantaire couldn’t decide if he was thankful for its background noise or not.

“Look,” Enjolras began, finally meeting Grantaire’s eyes, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for things to get out of hand that night.”

“It’s hardly your fault when I provoked you.”

“I provoked you, too.”

“I provoked you more.” Grantaire leaned against the back of the door, preferring to watch Enjolras’ shoes, for he couldn’t find in himself the same bravery Enjolras had to look him in the eye. “I was drunk and I said some awful things.”

“You only had a wine cooler.”

“I, uh, had a lot more earlier that day.” He rubbed the back of his neck, hoping to ease the awkwardness away. There was something about Enjolras standing in his apartment, in his territory, that seemed more unnatural than a world in which Bossuet had won the lottery. “But that doesn’t matter. Point is, I said a lot of things I didn’t mean, and I’m sorry.”

He finally found the courage to meet Enjolras’ eyes, and his heart squeezed a little tighter in his chest. Enjolras was looking at him softly, if a bit warily. It may have been the fondest expression Enjolras had ever given him.

“Let’s just chalk it up to a bad night, alright?” Enjolras offered. “I didn’t mean any of the things I said either.”

At this, Grantaire laughed. “Yes, you did.”

“Well… not everything.” He let out a little chuckle, too. The corner of his mouth tugged upwards, and Grantaire had to contain his delight at the sight of it because for once, that little tug was directed at _him_.

_Ohhhhhhh fuck._

“Why did you come here, anyway?” he asked, ignoring his internal groan of despair. “I mean, did someone send you here to apologize? It’s alright if that’s what happened, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Enjolras shook his head. “No. We were having a meeting”—(it clicked in Grantaire’s brain that of course, nothing could deter Enjolras from his purpose, not like everything could deter Grantaire from his purpose, whatever that was, as well as reminded him that it was Tuesday and not still Sunday like he’d been thinking for the past two days)—“and this book—a travel guide—fell out of Bossuet’s bag.”

“Ah. The trip. I didn’t know they were still planning that.”

“Well, I don’t think they were. Bossuet said it was leftover from when they _were_ planning it with you. Nobody’s mentioned it since that night.”

Grantaire smirked. His friends’ knowledge of when to shut up about something was nothing if not refined.

“Still would be cool to go,” he remarked, not so much to Enjolras as it was to the universe, but Enjolras was the only one of the two who could answer. He slid down to the floor and Enjolras copied him hesitantly, and understandably so; Grantaire still had trouble remembering dates and hardly knew how long it had been since his floors, let alone, his apartment had last been cleaned.

“Why do you want to go so badly? The places for trips like that, they’re only tourist traps.”

Grantaire grinned. “Now who’s the cynical one?”

Enjolras rolled his eyes. “I just _mean_ , you’d be better off planning for a vacation a while in advance. It’d certainly make for a more meaningful journey.”

“Would it? Fancy hotels and restaurants are fine, but do you really think that we could determine everyone’s schedule in three months? Life meddles all the time. Besides, you can’t tell me you’ve been blind—the others are dying with school and jobs and family shit weighing them down. They’re about to explode with stress. They could use the time off.”

“Why, R, it sounds like you care for something after all.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

But for a moment, Enjolras might have been. He stared at Grantaire, giving him a strange look that Grantaire had to turn away from, but even still, he felt spotlight of Enjolras’ strong gaze on him. He wished he had more to drink.

“You know that none of our problems just go away because you’re a little more impromptu about your plans, right?” Enjolras said quietly.

“Of course I do. But it does delay them for a little while.”

When he looked back up, he found Enjolras watching him still, but the curious look had been switched out with that half-tug of a smile again—even more, it was accompanied by that spark Grantaire had seen ignite in Apollo’s eyes so often. He realized he was wrong before—that previous half-tug of a smile was practically nothing compared to this.

Apollo’s light blinded him so much that he almost missed Enjolras ask if he had a computer.

 

At the time of the fifth time mention of it, the members of Les Amis were sitting in various parts of Boston when at 6:09 PM, their phones vibrated with a mass text.

 **Grantaire:** _HOW MANY OF YOU FUCKERS WANT TO GO ON A ROAD TRIP???????_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this turned out MUCH longer than I had planned.
> 
> I haven't the faintest idea if the rest of this story will be quite as emotional (if that's the best word?) as the first chapter was. I suppose time will tell.
> 
> (And yes, it is impossible for me not to write Cosette/Grantaire in any Les Mis fic. I would apologize if I was sorry... but I'm not.)
> 
> You can find me on tumblr: manicpixiedreamfedora.tumblr.com
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	2. at the bottom of everything by bright eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Les Amis prepares to leave for their trip. In some ways, it's easier said than done.

“What the fuckin’ fuck is _that_?”

It looked like the monster from the depths of retro automobile hell, bigger and more lumbering than anything that could be _considered_ a motor vehicle. Worse, it was covered in faded tie-dye patterns of psychedelic neon, as if the ’70s had chewed it up and spit it back out, then danced a rain dance around it and thoroughly stomped upon it. Half the windows were either cracked or missing, the engine smoked as Grantaire put it in park, and there was a space on the side that faced them where the door _should_ have been, but regrettably was not.

It was commonly known as an RV, but it looked more like a Death Trap.

Grantaire climbed out, jumping from the doorway to the pavement and using very game show hostess-like hand gestures to show the contraption off. “Well? What’cha think?”

“I think we’re gonna die,” Joly stated miserably.

“It’s an _RV_ ,” Éponine groaned.

“It’s groovy,” Bossuet snickered.

“It’s _smoking_ ,” Marius grimaced.

“We’re gonna _die_.”

“ _Excuse_ me,” Grantaire snapped, “but I did not just spend the past forty-five minutes haggling with a thousand-year-old car dealer who smelled of fish for fifty less dollars on this thing just so you all could complain. If you don’t like it, we can spend the next two weeks or so crammed in Feuilly’s minivan.”

Feuilly’s head snapped up from Kafka’s _Metamorphosis_. His eyes narrowed into a dark gaze. “What are you implying?”

“That your van is small.”

“So is your dick. My van is a babe.”

“I never said your van wasn’t a babe.”

“Better not have. I know where you sleep.”

“Guys, come on,” Enjolras spoke up, stepping forward to better look over the RV, and also possibly to keep Feuilly from going postal over any negative implications towards his beloved van. “Considering the number of people about to be stuck in some mode of transportation, not to mention how it’ll save us at least a bit of hotel money, it could be worse.”

The surprise on everyone’s faces at Enjolras’ support was more than apparent, none more so than on Grantaire’s. He and Enjolras had agreed to find some common ground for this trip—Grantaire’s passion, for once for _something_ , was more than enough to drive Enjolras’ own dedicated work ethic—but the support still felt strange and confounding.

“Yeah,” Grantaire said weakly, trying to mentally convey his gratitude but inadvertently conveying a furrowed look of slight terror more than anything. “So fuck off.”

Grantaire’s cause wasn’t helped when they all took turns examining the RV, which looked even worse on the inside, a blinding neon green beacon of dust and stains and special prizes inside every nook and cranny (“Why is there so much weird grass tucked in here?” Gavroche asked as he rifled through one of the drawers, only to have Éponine slam the drawer shut and forcibly remove him from the RV). Jehan was trying to see if the lava lamp next to the couch still worked when Courfeyrac came up behind him, wrapping his arms around Jehan’s waist and planting a kiss to the braid resting on his shoulder.

“Look what I found,” he said, bringing forth two faded tie-dye shirts. “There’s more under the passenger’s seat, too. Obviously we’ll wash these a couple dozen times in case they carry the plague on them, and there’s about a 79% chance that they do, but I figure it fits our elaborate, full-on touristy plans, to travel while wearing matching shirts so we don’t get lost, right?”

“Oh, there’s no chance at all of us losing each other while wearing those,” Jehan giggled, holding one of the shirts up to admire the pink, yellow, and orange swirls. “Good luck getting the others to wear these, though.”

Courfeyrac shrugged. “If anything, we can wear them, just you and me.”

“Like matching couple’s outfits?”

“Yep.” He placed another kiss to the side of Jehan’s neck. “Cheesy, I know—”

“Let’s do it,” Jehan grinned. “Although I would probably pay good money to see Enjolras wear one of these.”

“With his determination, he’d end up looking like a camp counselor.”

Courfeyrac and Jehan burst out laughing, almost doubling over onto the couch when they glanced Enjolras’ way. The strange look Enjolras gave them only added to the amusing mental image of him instructing young children to make macaroni art with the same fervor he used in his speeches.

“Do you think this is gonna work?” Jehan asked when the calmed down a bit. They leaned against the couch, ignoring the smell that wafted from it. “Or rather”—his eyes flickered over to Enjolras again, who was discussing something with Grantaire and Combeferre by the driver’s seat—“do you think _they_ will work?”

“Honestly, I think the idea of them even working together is enough of a reason to take this trip. It’s not every day you see Enjolras sticking up for Grantaire on the behalf of The Mystery Machine.”

As if the RV had heard them talking about itself, something within the engine let out a distinct _thunk_. Enjolras and Grantaire rushed outside, followed by Combeferre and Feuilly, the latter of whom muttered kept muttering about how his van would never make such a sound in a million years.

“We’re gonna die,” Joly remarked again, and while no one openly agreed with him, no one really argued with him either.

 

“This is never going to work.”

It had become routine of Enjolras to groan over his maps and his laptop, the computer filled to the point of potential crashing with windows of travel brochures and half a dozen Google searches: “The Best Roadside Attractions” or “The Most Popular Landmarks in the Southwest”; “What Theme Park Has The Most Roller Coasters?”; “The Most Beautiful Sights in North America”; “Top Ten National Parks”, and finally, Grantaire’s own search of “the best bars in america,” which was only up on Enjolras’ browser because Enjolras had yet to notice it. The younger man poured over his internet maps, plotting points and constantly changing them only so slightly to find the best routes with the best stops and the best accommodations of restaurants and low-budget motels. If Grantaire had his paint with him, he would paint a strange mural, one of states swirling together, landmarks mutilated into one massive piece of history, and at the very center of the piece would be Enjolras, asleep at the feet of great canyons and geysers of incredible proportions.

In theory, the plan was simple. Each person—even Gavroche, who’d convinced Éponine to bring him along and excuse him from school due to a “death in the family” on the promise that he’d do his missing schoolwork while on the road—would pick one place within the continent to travel to in the RV, now affectionately called The Mystery Machine (or The Death Star, depending who you asked). Fourteen destinations for fourteen people, spread across the country (and a couple parts of Canada) for roughly the next month, with only the lightest baggage they could carry and what little money they could muster as a group.

Yes, the theory of it was simple—the reality of it was much more complicated, and it made Grantaire wonder why Enjolras, as he typed away and swore at the laptop slower than his brain, even bothered.

But for whatever reason, Enjolras _did_ bother—if a bit aggressively, as was his way—and Grantaire chose to ignore to the mature adult in him that told him that this trip was pointless, as was _his_ way, and both did the things they did without totally understanding why.

“This is never going to work,” Enjolras sighed once again, and for the fifth time that hour, Grantaire began to protest, only to have Enjolras—without looking up—holding up a finger and say, “Don’t talk to me. This is your fault.”

Regardless of Enjolras’ wishes (and Grantaire loved doing things regardless of Enjolras’ wishes just about as much as he loved Enjolras), Grantaire said, “This can’t be completely my fault. At least I’m not the one who wants to go to _Alaska_.”

Across the room, lying along the recliner in a way that looked far more uncomfortable than it must have been, Courfeyrac looked up from Jehan’s tattered collection of John Keats’ work. “To be fair, you told us all to choose a place within driving distance. If you’d really wanted to keep it in the boundary of the states connected to each other, you should have given Jehan a limit.”

“How were we supposed to know that?” Enjolras said. “We didn’t think anyone would choose _Alaska_.”

Courfeyrac chuckled, flipping the pages in his book. “Then you don’t know Jehan at all.”

Grantaire leaned in to look at the maps on the laptop screen. “No wonder you don’t think this could work. You’re making it more complicated. What are all those dots?”

Enjolras seemed to take a moment to breathe before answering, “Those are potential stops along the way.”

“Why do we need them if they’re only potential?”

“We may need to stop there for gas or hotels or food—”

“We don’t need _that many stops_. The map’s starting to look like some form of bad pointillism—”

“We need to be _prepared_ , we may not last entire trip in that massive hippie whale you’ve got parked—”

“—Excuse me, but yesterday you were happy to support my chosen mode of transportation, and don’t you dare call her a ‘massive hippie whale’—”

“ _OH MY GOD SHUT UP!_ ” Courfeyrac yelled, throwing a pillow at whichever one of them the universe would grant hit—in this case, Enjolras. “We are _NOT_ doing this again. Now move.” He set down the book of poems, pushing aside Enjolras and Grantaire to sit in between them, and stole Enjolras’ laptop, despite Enjolras’ outrage at the action of deleting all of the maps he had saved.

Fifteen minutes later, Enjolras’ outrage had quelled into a slight awe at sight of Courfeyrac’s navigational work, a masterpiece that Grantaire thought may never compare to any one of his paintings.

“Even if this does work,” Enjolras said, more contemplative than out of his former frustration, “there’s still the matter of finances. We’re all college kids, we—”

The phone on the table vibrated. Enjolras stopped to read the message, and as he did so, his face changed from that slight awe to full-fledged astonishment.

“It’s Éponine. She says we have cash. Montparnasse is giving her some money he owed her.”

“How much?” Courfeyrac asked, taking a sip of Grantaire’s soda.

Enjolras showed them the text. Courfeyrac almost spit out his drink, half because the number Enjolras showed him was a pretty big number. The other half was because he realized Grantaire’s soda wasn’t actually soda.

Enjolras stared at the screen of his phone, frowning. “Should we question where Montparnasse—?”

“No,” Grantaire and Courfeyrac immediately answered.

“But—”

“No.”

“I—”

“ _No_.” Grantaire almost snatched the phone out of Enjolras’ hands, ready to throw it out the window if he had to, but when Enjolras turned to him again, his frown had morphed into a delighted grin, and Grantaire found he really didn’t care if Montparnasse had illegally acquired the money from twelve different countries, as well as stolen the Declaration of Independence with the intention of finding all the world’s lost fucking treasures beneath the streets of New York City.

“This could work,” Grantaire grinned back, all but shining in the glow of Enjolras’ childish excitement.

Courfeyrac sat back, his hands behind his head and a smug look across his face. “This could work.”

 

They planned over the course of three days: three days to make hotel reservations, three days to pack, and mainly, three days to fix and disinfect the RV (Joly’s hypochondria suddenly spread to everyone, even Grantaire, when he came across something moving inside one of the throw pillows—he hadn’t stayed in the RV long enough to find out what it was).

To say that everybody’s anticipation could have rivaled the eagerness of a child—or Joly—on Christmas morning would have been an understatement. They weren’t just restless with anticipation—they were off the walls with it.

At 6:30, on a cool, relatively calm Saturday morning, Les Amis gathered into The Mystery Machine and hit the road.

 

“Are we there yet?”

“If you say that one more time,” Bahorel said, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly, he threatened to break it, “I will stick the gearshift up your ass.”

“Who decided you should drive, anyway?” Grantaire hung over the driver’s seat, staring at the horrendous traffic jam beyond the RV with a pout. They had moved three feet, maybe, in the past hour. “This is _my_ ride.”

“I don’t trust you to drive around thirteen people in this Tonka Truck,” Feuilly said beside him in the passenger’s seat.

“Yet you trust Bahorel? _Who has set cars on fire?_ ”

“That was _one time_ ,” Bahorel muttered. “And it’s not like they ever had any proof.”

“I don’t know how you think that helps your case any,” Bossuet said from the overhead bunk above the driver’s seat, where he laid with a sleeping Joly tucked beneath his arm.

“Bahorel understands vehicles the same way I do,” Feuilly reasoned, leaning out the window to take a drag of smoke. “We share a respect for them, a respect that you lack.”

“That’s laughable, considering how you rank on this one at practically every opportunity you get. If anything, I respect The Mystery Machine way more than you! I bought the thing, after all.”

Feuilly shrugged. The RV moved three inches forward.

“Grantaire,” Jehan called softly. He sat on the bed with Courfeyrac, Éponine, Gavroche, Cosette, and Marius in the very back and motioned for Grantaire to come sit with him. Heaving an exaggerated sigh, Grantaire slumped to the back, flopping facedown onto the foot of the bed so as not to pull anyone out of their gradual crashes. Their spirits, as eager as they still were mentally, were no longer as fueled by the prospect of a journey as they were an hour ago. The painfully devastating traffic jam had evaporated their excitement as slowly as the cars around them moved, leaving them stuck in a half-wired, half-exhausted reverie. Éponine groaned every few minutes at the fact that she had yet to be practically dead to the world.

“You should sleep,” Jehan whispered, scooting closer to massage Grantaire’s head. “You’ll crash soon if you don’t.”

Grantaire’s eyes fluttered against the mattress. He made a humming noise of discontent at Jehan’s suggestion, but Jehan’s fingers felt _too_ good against his scalp. If his knack for poetry fell through overnight, Jehan would have an excellent career as a massage therapist.

“Why do we all have to sleep?” Gavroche mumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Because sleep is lovely. Sleep is our friend,” Éponine sighed into her pillow.

“Sleep is for the weak.”

“Then you just joined the road trip of the dullest, weakest bunch around. Sucks for you.”

Gavroche made a face. “I don’t want to sleep. I’m not tired.”

“ _Then go do something_.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you lie here on this pillow and close your eyes and silently think about all of the things you could go do?”

“That sounds a lot like sleeping.”

Éponine made a noise that almost sounded like a choked sob into her pillow.

“Gav,” Cosette yawned, drawing her face off of Marius’ chest. “Gav, go ask Enjolras if he’ll play cards with you. He needs a break, and if he says he doesn’t, then tell him he does, over and over again, and louder and louder. He’ll like that.”

Shrugging, Gavroche crawled over Éponine and scrambled to the dinette occupied by Enjolras, Combeferre, Musichetta, and a map bigger than the motor home’s windshield.

“Bless you, Cosette,” Éponine breathed before flickering out like a light in the next second.

Bahorel slammed a hand on the car horn. “ _Come on, motherfucker! Move!_ ”

Grantaire peaked out from the mattress, raising an eyebrow at Jehan. “This’ll get fun soon, right?”

Jehan chuckled, smothering Grantaire’s dark curls with his nimble hands. “Go to sleep, R.”

Grantaire shifted till his head lay on top of Jehan’s thigh and did as he was told.

 

In all his life, Combeferre couldn’t think of a time when he traveled somewhere that wasn’t for the sake of changing street addresses. He’d grown up from a simple childhood of lemonade stands, the clangs of wind chimes at night, and dozing on hilltops while watching clouds pass by. It was a quiet life, the very opposite of the windswept streets of buzzing Boston, but no less happy, in his opinion. In fact, in some ways, he still thought that he could hear the tinkling of wind chimes in the distance, and whenever he passed by a lemonade stand on his way home from school, he made sure to buy a cup, regardless of how much sugar the young entrepreneurs so direly needed to put in their plastic pitchers.

Now, in a cramped motor home with thirteen other people racing against man’s slideshow of city skylines and cars, and even hilltops that looked almost but not quite familiar, Combeferre found he was a bit out of his depth. Maybe it was homesickness, or motion sickness (the latter was more likely, with Bahorel’s driving), but all he knew was that there were no wind chimes or lemonade stands or Bostonians telling him he was walking too slow. It made him feel just as excited as Gavroche had endlessly been for the past four hours, and just as anxious as The Mystery Machine seemed to feel at the prospect of hauling fourteen people across the country for the next few weeks.

It didn’t help that Gavroche was having too much fun punching him in the arm every three minutes.

“Punch buggy!” he cried gleefully. “NO. PUNCH. BACK.”

Combeferre rubbed the spot on his shoulder that was surely turning fifty shades of purple by now. “Why are there so many Beetles out on the road? Is there a car show somewhere nearby?”

“Who cares? The only thing to worry about is whether or not you’re winning, and you, dear Combeferre, are losing.”

“You’re cheating. You know I’m not gonna punch a thirteen-year-old.” Combeferre looked warily out the window. “I bet you had something to do with all the Bugs out here, too.”

“You’re sounding pretty delusional, Combeferre. Maybe you should lie down.”

“Oh, _I_ should lie down, should I?” Combeferre grinned, snatching Gavroche by the back of his hoodie before he could run away and locking him his grip as he tickled the boy. Gavroche protested through his giggles, squirming down onto the seat, insisting quite loudly that he was thirteen and far too old for this kind of behavior, to which Combeferre called bullshit and tickled him more.

Behind him, Éponine and Cosette approached, smiling from ear-to-ear at the scene at the dinette. Éponine’s crept up behind Combeferre, who never would have noticed her if—in the next moment—she hadn’t gasped in his ear and pointed to the window. “Combeferre, look!”

Combeferre’s tickling paused, and instinctively, he sat up to get a better look at whatever mayhem they were driving by, giving Gavroche the perfect opportunity to pounce on him, slamming his smaller fist into Combeferre’s shoulder. “PUNCH BUGGY!” he yelled with delight, cheering to the roof of the RV. He jumped out of the dinette before Combeferre could grab him again and ran to the back of the bus. “NO PUNCH BAAAAAACK!”

At the front of the RV, Bahorel turned on the song “We Are the Champions.”

Combeferre groaned, forcing himself to sit upright. He was more than certain that his arm wouldn’t be the only thing bruising.

“That was foul play,” he told Éponine, rubbing the pain on the back of his neck, which was only worsened by Éponine climbing onto his back without warning.

“Sorry, dear,” she said, patting his head. “Gavroche and I are a tag-team. You never had a chance.”

“It was very cute, though. Incredibly Kodak moment.” Cosette slid in the seat opposite them, beside Enjolras, whose map-studying and course-charting had only faltered once, to play a round of rummy with Gavroche and Musichetta, since they left the city. Cosette watched him closely for a moment, taking notice of the iPod at his side. She tugged one of the ear buds out of his ear. Enjolras looked up.

“Will you be joining us in the real world any time soon?” she asked.

Enjolras made it look like he had to pause to think about his answer. “No.”

Cosette nodded and returned his ear bud to its rightful place. Enjolras gave a slight mock bow and went back to his maps. Cosette pretended to curtsey back.

“Thanks for hanging out with Gav for a bit,” Éponine said, nuzzling Combeferre’s ear. “Or, I suppose, thanks for being his punching bag.” Her warm breath sent shuddering sparks across his neck. He hoped she didn’t feel the heat in his face.

“It’s my pleasure to be a punching bag,” he replied, patting her arms as she clung to his neck. He tried to concentrate on the map of Connecticut sitting in front of him, but his forced attention on the lines of cities did nothing to keep the blush from his cheeks as Éponine sighed into his shoulder, positively content with herself. Whether this was because she was so well-rested now after a sleepless morning, or because she knew exactly what she was doing to him, he didn’t know, and he might not have even considered the latter thought had he not met eyes with Cosette and caught her sly smile. Knowing Éponine, it very well could have been both.

None of this cured his traveling anxiety in any way.

(In reality, Éponine actually _was_ just very well-rested. Cosette decided not to let Combeferre know this.)

“How long till we stop somewhere, Feuilly? I’m starving,” Éponine called out, sliding off of Combeferre’s back and into the space next to him. Combeferre internally sighed. He chose not to notice the smirk on Cosette’s face.

“I think there are sandwiches in the cooler,” Feuilly answered.

“We can’t have sandwiches as our first piece of food on our road trip!”

“What rule says that?”

“The rule that is my stomach, because I’m craving frozen yogurt.”

“Frozen yogurt?!” Gavroche came bounding out of the back room, bouncing on his heels. “I want frozen yogurt!”

“Yeah, like you fuckin’ need it,” Bahorel snorted, but he pulled the GPS off of its holster in front of him and reached back to hand it to Gavroche. “Find someplace close.”

“Close to what?” Bossuet, who’d been more than a little preoccupied with Joly’s neck to pay attention, poked his head out. “Where are we going?”

“The Thénardiers demand frozen yogurt.”

“And what the Thénardiers say, goes, hmm?” Combeferre elbowed Éponine, smirking when she elbowed back, with just as much force as her brother’s punches carried.

That smirk dropped when he found Cosette and Enjolras’ eyes on him. He cleared his throat and dropped his gaze to get a better look at a map of Tennessee, pretending that he wasn’t more than completely aware of every inch of his surroundings, and most definitely ignoring the fact that he could hear wind chimes in Éponine’s laughter.

 

Sleeping in The Mystery Machine wasn’t ideal—between Grantaire, Cosette, and Éponine’s renditions of Spice Girls songs, Bahorel’s road rage, and the low moans coming from the closed bedroom currently inhabited by Musichetta, Joly, and Bossuet, a moment of peace was unheard of.

 _As is the way of our little group_ , Courfeyrac thought, trying to remain concentrated on Keats’ declarations of love through the lyrics of “Wannabe”, which he willed himself not to join in on, though the temptation proved more difficult than he’d imagined.

In some part of his mind, he realized—as his eyelids fluttered and his head rested more comfortably against the pillows on the overhead bunk—that Keats’ poems were slipping out of his hand. He heard the book drop to the floor, and it occurred to him that he should pick it up. It also occurred to him that the pillow was very soft.

When Bahorel parked the RV and everyone clambered out, presumably to treat the employees at the frozen yogurt place to more of their ’90s musical stylings, John Keats’ poems remained on the floor, and above it, Courfeyrac curled up and let out a soft snore. Even in his fairly deep state of dozing, Courfeyrac could appreciate the silence that filled The Mystery Machine, however unnatural it seemed.

But that silence was short-lived. Before Courfeyrac knew it, the new RV door creaked open. Moments later, something climbed up to join Courfeyrac on the bunk. From behind him, arms encircled his waist, and Courfeyrac settled himself back, shifting to lean against the person interrupting his precious sleep.

He knew those arms. This was an interruption he would let slide.

“I let John fall,” he murmured against Jehan’s chest, breathing in the scent of flowers that perfectly matched the pattern on his sweater.

“Hmm?” Jehan said, pressing his lips to the top of Courfeyrac’s head.

Courfeyrac made a gesture towards to floor. Jehan looked over him.

“John fell,” Courfeyrac mumbled again.

Jehan chuckled. “He’s been through worse, believe me.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm. Seventh grade. The boys tried to set my backpack on fire. That’s why the edges are singed. It was the first thing I saved.”

At this, Courfeyrac opened his eyes. “I would have torn them to shreds.”

“Don’t worry. I did.”

Courfeyrac grinned.

“I brought you something.” Jehan sat up, reaching down towards their feet to grab two cartons of frozen yogurt, both of which were covered in possibly ever candy known to mankind. Courfeyrac scooped up one of the cookies, dotting the tip of Jehan’s nose with the chocolate swirls covering half of the wafer. Jehan scrunched his face as Courfeyrac kissed the chocolate off.

“How much longer do you think it’ll be, anyway?”

“Enjolras says we’re about an hour and a half away from Philadelphia. You have time for another nap.”

“I don’t think I’m quite as tired anymore,” Courfeyrac replied with a frozen yogurt in his mouth. He swallowed and added with a smile, “Besides, the sugar high will kick in soon.”

“No Spice Girl classic is safe.”

“And _all_ Spice Girl songs are classics.” Setting his carton aside, Courfeyrac leaned up to catch Jehan’s mouth in a frozen kiss. Jehan happily obliged, shoving his own frozen yogurt away, as Courfeyrac cradled the back of his head, running his fingers through the laces in Jehan’s braid. He tasted like raspberry and chocolate and every single candy Jehan had put on Courfeyrac’s own frozen yogurt, but this combination was infinitely better.

After a moment, Jehan pulled back, breathless and dizzy. Courfeyrac drew his hand out of the hair now straying from his braid, brushing loose strands back behind his ear.

“You know, you don’t have to read John if you don’t want to,” Jehan said.

Courfeyrac nodded. “I know, but I do want to. He’s one of your favorites.”

Jehan’s flushed face beamed more beautifully than any of John Keats’ words combined, but Courfeyrac was no poet, so he simply pulled Jehan back into another kiss and hoped Jehan could feel beating of his heart, so it would make up for the words he didn’t know how to say.

“ _Please tell me you’re joking!_ ” Bahorel’s voice thundered even outside the RV. Jehan and Courfeyrac broke apart once more as the door was thrown open and everyone poured back inside, with Bahorel stomping back into the driver’s seat, more irate than any person holding frozen yogurt should have been.

“Bahorel, I’m so sorry!” Éponine rushed into the passenger’s seat before Feuilly could slip back in. “Please don’t be mad, I’m _so_ sorry!”

Courfeyrac stuck his head below the bunk. “What’s going on?”

“Éponine left Montparnasse’s money back at home,” Joly said.

“He gave me the money when I went to talk to my parents about letting Gavroche come with us,” explained Éponine. “My mom walked in and I panicked and hid it before she saw. It was such a madhouse over there that I just forgot all about it.”

Bahorel clung to the steering wheel and hung his head.  “I have been driving for _six hours_.”

“I’ll make it up to you, please,” Éponine pleaded, a hand hovering over Bahorel’s shoulder, but then deciding that human contact may not be the most intelligent approach at the moment. “Let me drive! I’ll drive all the way back, and you can rest.”

“Are you kidding? This thing runs on anger and the tears of my enemies. It’ll get nowhere if it’s running on rest,” Bahorel fumed, slamming the RV in drive, which probably would have been a more effective move if it was any vehicle lighter than an RV. The Mystery Machine lurched forward slowly, out of the parking lot and back out onto the highway, facing away from the prospect of their first stop.

Courfeyrac lay back against Jehan’s shoulder. His frozen yogurt had become more of soupy yogurt at this point. He could not find it in himself to care.

“You know,” Jehan said, dragging his nose along the curve of Courfeyrac’s neck, “you don’t have to learn John’s work all by yourself. I would be glad to help you.”

“Would you now?” Courfeyrac turned into the poetic mumbles resting on Jehan’s lips, breathing in every word. He didn’t think he’d ever loved John Keats’ poems more.

Needless to say, Courfeyrac and Jehan’s frozen yogurt melted.

 

It took another four hours to get back to Boston, three for the trip itself and one for the traffic. When The Mystery Machine pulled up in front of the Thénardier’s house, the building looked abandoned, but Enjolras knew that it looked abandoned more often than not. The reluctance to return even to an empty house was evident on Éponine’s face, but all the same, she demanded that Gavroche not follow her and led Enjolras and Bahorel inside.

The house still seemed deserted even on the inside, but as they crept up the stairs, silent save for the creaks in the floorboards, Éponine insisted that they could never be too careful.

When they reached her old room, she dove for a potted plant on her empty desk. “It’s not here,” she whispered.

“Are you sure?” Enjolras hissed back.

“Of course I’m sure! How could I not be sure if it’s not right in front of me?” Her eyes wandered around the desk, around the floor, around her bed and her wardrobe and every nook and cranny she knew of. “ _Shit shit shit shit shi_ —”

“Looking for this?”

They all spun around. Mrs. Thénardier leaned against the doorframe, flipping through the large, neatly-strapped stack of money in her hands. Her gangly husband hovered behind her. “You’ve been holding out on us, Éponine! That’s not very nice.”

“Give it back, it’s mine.” Éponine made a move to steal the money back, but her mother stepped out of reach. “Montparnasse would back me up.”

“But Montparnasse isn’t here.” Mrs. Thénardier reached out, taunting Éponine with the money, and while Éponine had always been quick, she had to have inherited her speed somewhere. Her mother spun away from Éponine and threw the money to Mr. Thénardier, and they both laughed at the fury on their daughter’s face.

“Oh, don’t look at us like that,” her father sneered. “Imagine how we felt, knowing that our own daughter didn’t want to come to us with such a heavy burden of money? You really think your mother didn’t notice you diving to hide all of this?”

Enjolras stepped up beside Éponine. He wasn’t sure if he was more ready to restrain her from attacking the both of them or restrain himself. “We won’t leave until you give it back.”

“Then you’ll be here a while.”

“Oh, please. We do _not_ have time for this.” Before Mr. Thénardier could run away, Bahorel surged forward, grabbing Éponine’s father by the collar of his shirt and bashing his head against the other man’s with a sickening _crack_. Bahorel stumbled slightly but appeared unaffected otherwise; Mr. Thénardier, on the other hand, collapsed.

Éponine snatched the money from her father’s hands before her mother could grab it. “Run!” She leaped over Mr. Thénardier’s moaning body, disappearing with Bahorel and Enjolras out of the darkened house.

 

Five hours and several more cartons of frozen yogurt later, The Mystery Machine arrived in Philadelphia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of thing I'd like to address:
> 
> \- Originally, they all lived in NYC. I changed it to Boston because I was having difficulties with certain aspects of mapping out their trip, and changing it from NYC to something else was the one of the few things I had to fix.
> 
> \- Obviously I'm taking some liberties here in terms of reality, such as the fact that none of them really care too much that they're going on a spontaneous road trip while school is still technically in session, and the money that Eponine has come into at such perfect timing. Just go with it, shhhhhh... ;)
> 
> \- I'd also like to thank takemetoyourglory on tumblr for coming to my aid when I was having so much trouble deciding where Jehan, Eponine, Enjolras, and Feuilly would want to go to on this trip! Alaska does seem very fitting for Jehan, and the others I'm keeping secret till their chapters are posted.
> 
> On a similar note of school, since my finals are this week and the next, I don't know if the next chapter will be posted by next week/sooner or not. I'll try to work on getting it up within the week, but between this and my other Les Mis fic, as well as exams, it might take longer.


	3. falling slowly from once the musical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marius has a lot of feelings about food, Joly has a lot of feelings about his health, and Grantaire has a lot of feelings period.

Philadelphia felt like the layers of time slapping you in the face all at once. Between the citizens and cars filling up the busy streets with every noise possibly known to man (finding a place to park The Mystery Machine for the night had been a nightmare) and the unyielding historical presence clearly seen in its architecture, its sidewalks, even its air, it was hard to get a true grip on what the city actually was; for that reason, Grantaire found himself loving it. The artist in him took in the sights with an increasing sense of anticipation, for he could almost feel the art in the structures around him, from the largest of museums to each Phanatic Around Town statue, as many as there were. He decided that Philadelphia was the graffiti decorating the walls, a spray of paint marked over the other sprays of paint from years prior, a never-ending piece of art, colorful and bold and proud of itself.

Philadelphia was a heart—of what, Grantaire didn’t know, and maybe, being a tourist, he wasn’t supposed to know. He was okay with that.

And why Marius had chosen this place as his road trip destination was just as much of a mystery, but again, he chose not to ask and simply kept shuffling behind the tour group in Independence Hall. The tour was interesting but slow—most of their historical sight-seeing had been so far. The most action to have occurred happened at the Liberty Bell when Gavroche remarked of his increasing boredom, prompting Enjolras to give him the most enthusiastic lecture on the Declaration of Independence the world had ever known, arguing heatedly with Gavroche’s very insistent _okay, this is all fascinating but I’m STILL bored_.

(Grantaire had then told Enjolras that his talent as an idealist was wasted, as he would have made a fine tour guide. Now, in the midst of the tour, Grantaire and Gavroche had both literally and figuratively learned their lessons and kept quiet as the tour guide rambled on.)

Not that Grantaire was paying as much attention to the tour guide’s guiding as he was to the utter gleeful looks on Enjolras and Combeferre’s faces. Grantaire could only imagine the orgasm Enjolras would have once they stepped foot in Washington D.C, and then suddenly, Enjolras and orgasms were all he could think about, aside from a passing thought that Independence Hall was not the place to be thinking about sexual favors.

“Psst.” Cosette let the rest of the tour group walk past her so then she could skip up beside Grantaire, linking arms with him. She nudged his side with her elbow and whispered, “You’ve got your musing face on. What are you thinking about?”

“Not orgasms,” Grantaire replied with a smirk, failing to notice an elderly couple’s unfortunately close proximity and their subsequent glares of distaste.

Cosette’s eyebrows shot up, but her amused smile counteracted any surprise. “That’s my favorite thing not to think about.”

“What a coincidence, it’s also _my_ favorite thing not to think about.”

“I’d imagine that could be said for a lot of people.”

“I wonder if it was our founding fathers’ favorite thing not to think about, too?”

“‘I’ll crack your Liberty Bell any day, baby.’”

Cosette and Grantaire each bit down on the inside of their cheeks to keep their laughter at bay, though their efforts weren’t very successful. Finally noticing the elderly couple, who now looked upon them, utterly appalled, Cosette turned her face into Grantaire’s shoulder, choking out silent giggles, as Grantaire bit down hard on his bottom lip. “Oh, don’t look at us like that. Freedom of speech, you know? _Among other things_.”

The elderly couple had, at this point, fled the area with a most disapproving look, in favor of a somewhere far more sophisticated. Grantaire and Cosette’s schoolgirl-like laughter had carried beyond just their own little corner of the world, interrupting the tour and leaving the guide and other tourists more than a little annoyed. The rest of Les Amis in front of them, however, simply rolled their eyes.

“ _Anyway_ ,” the tour guide said pointedly, directing the attention of the other tourists. “If you’ll all _quietly_ follow me…”

“You’re both children.” Enjolras shook his head before he moved with the rest of the tour, but he had a faint smirk on his face and his scolding seemed fairly half-hearted.

Cosette and Grantaire followed at a much slower distance than everyone else, eyes roaming over the pieces of history locked behind glass boxes. “You like it here, don’t you?” Cosette said, cocking her head slightly.

Grantaire nodded. “It feels… good.”

“I can see that. We’ll have to check out some of the museums before we leave.”

“‘We’? You don’t have plans with Marius? He did choose this place, after all.”

Cosette shrugged. “He seems excited to be here, but he hasn’t really given me any particular reason. He’s enjoying himself, certainly, but I don’t think historical aspect is what’s made him so eager.”

“Maybe he’s looking for a bit of constitutional lovin’. Maybe he’s got some wood that isn’t his teeth.”

“ _Oh my God_ ,” Cosette snorted, covering her face with her hand. “That was awful. I don’t know if I can be seen with you much longer.”

“And ‘cracking the Liberty Bell’ was what, comedy gold? Wait wait wait.” Grantaire held out a hand, stopping them in the middle of the room. Cosette peered up at him as he concentrated hard on the opposite wall. “… I’m trying to find some sort of innuendo in The Second Amendment.”

“Don’t hurt yourself.”  Cosette took his hand and dragged him back into the tour group, much to the dismay of the tour guide, whose daily tolerance of historical sex jokes had just about reached its limit.

Unfortunately for everyone, Grantaire did eventually find innuendo in all of the Amendments.

 

Marius was ecstatic.

Cosette was right, of course—his excitement had nothing to do with the historical landmarks that Enjolras fawned over, nor did he share Grantaire’s sentiments of the city. But he was a bounding mass of freckles the entire morning, grinning and declaring his love to his friends and Cosette at every corner of every street, even at the most unromantic of spots (“This will be our Philadelphia spot,” he told her, even as she pointed out that there were much more meaningful places at which to make declarations of love than at trashcans). Cosette remarked that she couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so eager, not even for sex, a conversation that stopped as soon as it started, due to Enjolras claiming that “The Fragile and Thrilling Sex Life of Marius Fucking Pontmercy” was the last thing he wanted to hear about.

They allowed Marius to lead them into South Philadelphia, watching as his merry greetings to strangers were met with strange looks. Even if they had the heart to tell him that no person on the planet existed with as much enthusiasm as him, they didn’t think his spirits would have been too dampened.

“Marius,” Éponine groaned, tugging on the back of his shirt so he would stumble back a few paces. “My feet are killing me. _Where_ are we going?”

“It’ll be great, I promise,” he said, beaming, and he tugged on her arm, pulling her and Cosette forward till they were skipping down the street.

Only at the intersection of Federal and South 9th did he finally stop, bringing the girls to a giggling halt. He turned to face his friends, bright red from being out in the sun so long. _He looks like the happiest little tomato_ , Cosette mused.

“Have any of you,” he said, his voice calm but carrying the spirit of anticipation, “ever had a real Philly cheese steak?”

A moment passed before Les Amis exploded.

“Marius, _please_ tell me you didn’t only choose Philadelphia because you wanted a _cheese steak_ ,” Enjolras mumbled through his hands.

“ _Are you for fucking REAL?!_ ” Bahorel screamed. “I drove for _sixteen hours_ so you could get a fucking _sandwich?!_ ”

“Have you actually seen those things? They look terrifying for your health,” Joly winced.

“SIX. TEEN. HOURS.”

Marius appeared about ready to shrink into the ground beneath Bahorel’s feet. “B-but you like steak… and cheese…”

“You know what else I like? When the police don’t find the bodies.”

Marius’ eyes widened.

“Bahorel, you’re not killing anyone,” Cosette sighed, standing between her towering friend and her trembling dearest. She took Marius’ hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “This is Marius’ moment, give him a break. You don’t hear any of us complaining about where _you_ want to go.”

“Because I don’t want to go to a whole city just for a single sa—”

“Bahorel.”

“But—”

“You’re _not_ killing _anyone_.”

Bahorel groaned, now sounding more defeated and despairing than like he was about to snap Marius in two lanky pieces. “ _Sixteen hours_.” For dramatic effect, he draped himself over Feuilly’s back, letting out a very loud whine. Feuilly patted him on the head and said, quite indifferently, “There, there.”

“Uh. Anyway,” Marius cleared his throat, glancing everywhere except in Bahorel’s direction. “I’ve made up a plan for us, because I looked up the restaurants with the best cheese steaks in Philadelphia and there were ten, but two of them were a bit of a ways away, so, uh—” Clearing his throat again, Marius stuffed his hands into his pockets to pull out several small, crumpled brochure maps, all of which fell out onto the pavement as soon as he got hold of them. Courfeyrac moved to help pick them up, bending down at the same time as Marius and thus ramming heads with him. Cosette helped them both up, placing a kiss to each of their foreheads.

“Anyway,” Marius said again, rubbing the spot that Cosette had kissed. “So, uh, everyone take a map, and you can stay here or go to one of the places marked, and then I figured we could meet up at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, because I’ve seen pictures taken of the city at night from there and it looks nice, and we can sight-see in the meantime… yeah.” His voice trailed off, and relief flooded his face. He sighed and smiled, relatively calmer and almost back to his previous excitement, till Bahorel spoke up again.

“The Philadelphia Museum of Art? Isn’t that where the _Rocky_ steps are?”

“… I think so.”

Bahorel perked up, removing himself from Feuilly’s shoulder. “Well then. Looks like I won’t be killing you after all, Pontmercy.”

Marius responded by letting out a high-pitched, nervous laugh.

 

“He had a point, you know.”

“What do you mean?” Marius looked at Cosette, frowning. He’d recovered quickly, once Bahorel had gotten a good distance away—he now just seemed happy to be alive. Absently, he brushed a lock of golden hair behind Cosette’s ear.

“Bahorel,” she replied, looping her arm with his, fanning herself against the near-summer heat, even if they were shaded by the roof of Pat’s. “It does seem like an awful lot of effort just for a sandwich.”

“Ah”—Marius accepted the two cheese steaks handed to him through the open window and paid the man at the register—“but it’s not just a sandwich.”

Cosette quirked an eyebrow, the look in her eyes speaking novels of curiosity. If Marius had to pick the top five things he loved about Cosette (a list he actually thought about daily, with his answers always changing), then her eyes would have been included in the top three, not only because he constantly found himself drowning in them, but because they held all of the words she didn’t say and somehow that made her all the more fascinating. Reading her eyes had easily become one of his favorite hobbies.

“When I was in the third grade,” he said, sitting down at one of the nearby tables, “my class came here on a field trip. We visited art museums and parks and all of the historical stops, and then we came here for lunch. I swear, the sandwich I’d had that day was the best I’d ever had. I came home raving about it for days and days—you can only imagine how much my grandfather wanted me to shut up about a godforsaken cheese steak, of all things. I realize now how silly it was, but honestly, this cheese steak unlocked feelings in me I didn’t know existed.”

Cosette laughed. “I don’t think it’s silly, I think it’s cute. I never knew you were so passionate about sandwiches. Should I feel threatened?”

Marius shook his head. “I’m not _that_ passionate. And anyway, half the reason I wanted to come here was for you.”

“For me?” Curiosity again (really, he knew she was always curious), paired with surprise. “Why?”

He shrugged, turning his face down so that she wouldn’t see the blush creeping across, although he knew she could see it all the same anyway. “This place means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me. Obviously you mean a lot _more_ to me than a sandwich, but still. What better way to share in a rekindled memory than with the person I love most?”

When Marius looked up again, he read her eyes like an open book: awe, love, pure and utter delight. He could get dizzy just from watching her bursting joy.

“That is the most romantic sandwich-related sentiment I have ever heard,” she laughed, and he laughed with her, dipping down to kiss her on the cheek.

“I’m no Jehan, but I try. Now _c’mon_.” Marius pulled her forward, off of the table so another one of the waiting customers could claim it for themselves. On their way toward the museum, Cosette—her mouth filled with bites of steak—lamented about how good the sandwich was and perhaps they should go back and get another, just before they hit the road, and Marius came to the happy conclusion that he preferred this memory to his third grade field trip.

 

Joly stared at the sandwich dripping with grease in Bossuet’s hands and looked like he was about to be sick just from the sight of it.

“Joly, dear,” Musichetta said in an attempt to pull him out of his internalized panic, to no avail.

“But… cholesterol… my arteries…”

“You don’t _have_ to eat it, dear.” Musichetta, in all her wondrous patience, and Bossuet, in all his amusement and love for Joly, chuckled softly to themselves, each earning a faint glare from the young doctor in return. To their right, tourists surrounded the LOVE statue and the rush of the fountain behind the statue filled their ears. Musichetta thought for a moment that perhaps her own love for Joly and Bossuet could be likened to the statue, strengthened by the serenade of the small waterfall, and yet—as Joly glared and Bossuet laughed—it occurred to her that no, her waterfall symphony would be bigger than the statue and the fountain, and for that matter, bigger than the whole of Pennsylvania. (Perhaps even the world.)

“But everyone else is doing it!” Joly pouted.

“Weren’t you taught not to give into peer pressure?” Bossuet raised the cheese steak to his mouth and took a bite bigger than expected, not only resulting in too much to chew at one time, but also in inevitably biting his tongue.

“I doubt they ever thought it would apply to food,” Musichetta said, frowning when Bossuet hissed. She stroked the spot at the nape of his neck that helped soothe him. “Kids these days…”

Joly rolled his eyes. “It’s not that I _don’t_ want it, it’s that I don’t want to die. You feel me?”

“Yes,” Musichetta replied before she could help herself, slipping her other hand downwards to grab Joly’s ass. Joly very poorly suppressed a mischievous grin.

“Students, please, there are children around,” Bossuet teased.

“It’s the LOVE statue. It’s contagious.”

“Tell that to the cops when they catch us for public indecency.” Bossuet rubbed at the sore spot on his tongue with his front teeth. “Joly, darling, you know that if you were to take one bite, it would not kill you on the spot.”

“That’s what you think. Remember that episode of _SpongeBob_?”

“That was a pie-bomb.”

“And who’s to say that this isn’t a sandwich-bomb?”

“A lot of things, especially the notion that that episode was completely fucked-up.”

Joly’s pout deepened. “I like that episode!”

“Hey, I never said I didn’t, but you have to admit, it was weird! Why would there be bombs in pies?”

“Well, why does a crab own a burger joint at the bottom of the Pacific _AND_ have a daughter who’s a whale? We can’t apply logic to _SpongeBob_.”

Musichetta looked on at her boys affectionately. “Ah yes, these are the men whom I have chosen to love.”

Joly sighed with a little more force than necessary. Finally, after spending another two minutes staring at the sandwich in Bossuet’s hands, he reached over and pulled the cheese steak towards him, daring to take as big of a bite as Bossuet had taken.

“Oh, God,” he groaned while chewing. “I can almost hear my arteries screaming. It’s _terrible_.”

He took another bite anyway.

 

It was a clever plan, really.

Because it just so _happened_ that Cosette had asked Éponine just that morning, while in the bathroom of Independence Hall, what Éponine thought of Combeferre, and of course, once Cosette had really coaxed it out of her, Éponine had said something along the lines, “Of course, I think he’s cute. Who doesn’t?” while making a little too much of an effort to avert her gaze; and then it just so _happened_ that Cosette kept _accidentally_ bumping Éponine into Combeferre while they were touring the city, and then, by the time of Marius’ cheese steak relay, Cosette _happened_ to mention to Gavroche that Combeferre had said he would love to race him, and before Combeferre could manage an, “I said what?” Gavroche was already racing down the sidewalk, shouting about how Combeferre was a slowest, oldest man he had ever met.

When Éponine saw Cosette’s look of innocence, she knew that she was in danger of a conniving scheme, but Combeferre had already taken off after Gavroche, yelling that while he might have been a _tad_ older than Gavroche, he could out-race his butt any day, and Éponine had no choice but to follow after them.

Yes, it was a very clever plan. Éponine just didn’t understand _how_.

She tapped her foot impatiently at the table of Geno's, eyeing Combeferre and Gavroche as they stood in line. Combeferre was talking animatedly about something and Gavroche seemed fairly interested, wide-eyed and, by the looks of it, begging for Combeferre to do whatever was so incredible. Combeferre made a show of looking around, acting as if his secret was too much for the outside world to handle (though not too much for Éponine, apparently, when he slipped a wink at her as his gaze swept over her), and then, he reached behind Gavroche’s ear, producing a quarter. Gavroche tried not to look too impressed, but Éponine knew her brother better than that, and anyway, he was a terrible liar.

She watched Combeferre produce as many coins from thin air as he could before they reached the front of the line. When he and Gavroche finally sat down at Éponine’s table, they had three large cheese steaks, three sodas, and an abundance of quarters.

“Gav, could you grab some napkins please?” Éponine asked. Gavroche nodded and ran back over to the restaurant.

“Kid’s gonna leave me broke,” Combeferre joked, handing Éponine her sandwich.

“And he’ll love every second of it, too.” Éponine narrowed her eyes at Combeferre, who seemed ignorant of her pressing gaze for the moment. She watched him take a messy bite out of his food, and she watched him push his glasses up the bridge of his nose so that the lenses wouldn’t get marked with grease. She watched how the wind played with his hair and wondered if it felt as good as it looked in the breeze. She watched him slip another quarter into Gavroche’s pile of magic money, and then, she watched as his blue eyes caught her staring.

“You okay?” he asked, eyebrows knitting together.

She smiled, heart hammering in her chest. “Absolutely.”

(A clever fucking plan, indeed.)

 

When Enjolras and Feuilly arrived at Ben Franklin Parkway, just across from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Grantaire was already sitting along the edge of the sidewalk with a half-eaten cheese steak and a Polaroid camera beside him.

“Where’s Bahorel?” Enjolras asked. “Didn’t he go to Campo’s with you?”

Grantaire nodded. “He’s in line for the _Rocky_ statue.”

“They have a _statue_ , too?  Across from an  _art museum_?” Feuilly’s eyes widened. “It’s like a dream come true.” He shoved his leftover cheese steak napkins and his almost-empty can of Coke into Enjolras’ free hand and dashed across the street without much of a second thought. Enjolras grumbled to himself at the extra load in his hands as he sat down beside Grantaire and the Polaroid.

“Where’d you find that?” He nodded to the camera. “I didn’t think they made those anymore.”

“They don’t. Bahorel saw it in the window of a thrift shop as we were heading over here. Not a bad deal.”

“And it works?”

Grantaire gave him a wicked smile, and before Enjolras knew it, a flash of light burst before his eyes. Once the bright spots clouding his vision had subsided, Enjolras found the developing snapshot of his face, caught in the middle of blinking and recoiling from the sudden light, resting on his knee.

“I envy you, Apollo,” Grantaire said, acting wistful. “Even the most unflattering of expressions are flattering on you. Figures.”

“Oh, _don’t_ start with that Apollo shit again,” Enjolras hissed, his irritation getting the better of him, only to remember immediately after he spoke that they were on vacation and had agreed not to let the very things of irritation and vastly opinionated political tirades get the better of either of them. Softening a bit, he decided to start again. “You take photography, don’t you?”

“I suppose.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I take photography when it suits me. Same goes for the rest of my classes.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“They don’t always suit me.”

Enjolras watched Grantaire fiddle with the Polaroid, nimble fingers reaching through the slot to play with the film. “You should take advantage of your opportunities, you know. You’re better than that.”

Grantaire scoffed. “As if you believe that.”

Enjolras frowned. “I _do_ believe that.”

The hands stopped fiddling. Grantaire peered at him out of his peripheral vision, wary, like he was ready for Enjolras to jump up and yell that he’d just been Punk’d. Enjolras took his silence—and his own distance from Ashton Kutcher—as a sign to continue carefully.

“I’ve seen your art, R. I see you sketching at every meeting. Even now, you’ve still got green paint behind your ear. You’re good, _really good_.” Enjolras would have went on, because he had seen the portraits Cosette and Courfeyrac and Éponine liked to show off, and the drawings Gavroche hung on the doors of his bedroom at home, and the canvases lying in Grantaire’s apartment the day he went to visit him. Grantaire had a gift, and Enjolras would have told him so, but Grantaire’s face had turned a deep scarlet that looked almost worse than any sunburn the hot Philadelphia sun could possibly give him, and Enjolras feared that maybe he’d said too much. He looked down at the trash in his hands, wondering whether he should perhaps find Feuilly and Bahorel and leave Grantaire alone.

But then he heard Grantaire’s awkward mumble of a “thank you” and caught the slight curve of Grantaire’s mouth, gentle but proud, as the artist stared into the pavement. Before Grantaire could realize what was happening, Enjolras picked up the Polaroid and snapped a shot of Grantaire’s profile.

It was the sound of the camera that brought Grantaire back to reality, but the booming shout from across the street that diverted his attention. From the museum, Bahorel jogged across the top steps with Feuilly (as well as dozens of other tourists) close behind, the two of them pumping their fists in the air. The rest of Les Amis had begun to arrive, racing each other up the steps. Éponine laughed wildly as she ran, in the lead against Jehan, Courfeyrac, Joly, and Bossuet, who was having trouble staying upright, but was nonetheless pleased. Combeferre and Musichetta didn’t bother much with racing and merely chatted comfortably to the top, while Marius and Cosette practically danced up the stairs. Gavroche shot up the steps like a streak of lightning, and when he reached the top, Bahorel grabbed him and raised him up like a trophy.

“Race ya!” Grantaire shouted, no longer blushing but stuffing the last few remaining bites of his sandwich into his mouth all at once. He was running across the street before Enjolras could tell him that there was 97.8% chance he was going to choke and die.

Enjolras groaned, placing the Polaroid around his neck, bundling Feuilly’s trash together, and shoving the immortalization of Grantaire’s reddened, quietly beaming profile into his back pocket. He dashed past the rush of traffic and raced Grantaire up the stairs of the museum as Les Amis all sang (more screamed, really) the tune of “Gonna Fly Now” in the background.

 

Later, when they’d fawned over the art museum and taken a dozen or so pictures in front of the _Rocky_ statue, night fell and the city lit up. As they gazed into the distance, Marius sat in the very center of the group, with Cosette on his right, leaning against his shoulder, Joly on his left, beaming into the night while he clutched Bossuet and Musichetta’s hands, and Enjolras below his left knee, his eyes as bright as they always looked when he saw visions of the future he had planned for the world. Above him sat Bahorel, and Marius was more than pleased that his burly friend was not threatening him.

He pressed his lips to the palm of Cosette’s hand and grinned like that of the Cheshire cat. Philadelphia shined on, a constellation of skyscrapers and blazing lights and the history of revolutionaries. It felt strange and familiar all at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Wow, nearly a thousand hits? That's crazy!!!
> 
> -I've only been to Philadelphia once and that was years ago, so I hope I wrote it alright.
> 
> -I really believe the universe was against me finishing this chapter. My laptop sort of broke a little bit as I was about halfway through (nothing was lost but the computer itself was kind of damaged), and then as I was about three-fourths of the way through, I DID lose a small portion of what I had written. This week has made me fed up with computers, man.
> 
> -Finals are over! This has nothing to do with the story but it just makes me happy.
> 
> -If you'd like to see any updates about the story as it's being written, I have a tumblr (manicpixiedreamfedora) and I sometimes liveblog chapters under the tag "Five Times Grantaire." That's usually what I call it, anyway, because lol I did not think out the length of the story's title very well when I first started writing this.


	4. now by paramore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One word: Monopoly.

Playing Monopoly with Les Amis was much less of a game and much more of a battleground.

Firstly, the presence of the game warranted Enjolras’ anti-capitalistic rants that went on during set-up, a time which took ten minutes longer than it should have because Marius liked to read the rules, thus giving Enjolras more time to grow more and more furious and lash out on the Luke Skywalker game piece (Joly had won the Star Wars Edition of the game off of eBay).

Secondly, the game itself could generally be brutal, an opportunity Les Amis tended not to try encourage initially, at least until somebody won the boardwalk spaces, and then all hell broke out into a scene of bloodshed and house-buying and jail time and bankruptcies. Cosette and Courfeyrac usually started off strong, but by the time of the boardwalk battle, they’d end up falling short from buying as many houses as they could, and would then try to bargain their way back into the game, sometimes so passionately that they brought their own material possessions into the mix (though ever since accidentally trading Bossuet his Xbox for the railroad properties, Courfeyrac was a lot more wary of his actions in those sorts of moments). Combeferre was more interested in keeping his money in order and keeping the peace between his friends than buying up properties, whereas Feuilly often tried to steal back his properties even after mortgaging them, or tried to slip money from the bank when Combeferre wasn’t looking. Joly concentrated more on the utilities, which only worked to his advantage about 47% of the time.  Bahorel’s playing was average, but he’d get in everyone’s face and laugh whenever they were forced to pay him even the smallest sum of money; if it was the other way around, he’d argue with the player till he had to storm outside for a smoke break—and if that didn’t cause Marius to start hyperventilating, then Marius would last till the point of putting one house on each of his two properties and then congratulate every person on their own victories for the rest of the game. Éponine and Jehan were the wild cards—they played their turns quietly and simply, but ended up getting the most properties, snatching up hotels as soon as the opportunity struck and aggressively calling out any players on their cheating (the latter was more Éponine's part, but everyone knew better than to cross Jehan as it was). Gavroche played loudly and spent money like there was no tomorrow, but often managed to get park place to save himself, and while Grantaire wasn’t very good at the game, he played so loudly and so obnoxiously, cursing out anyone who dared to tell him he was making a bad investment, that everyone almost believed he was fairly good at the game.  

Enjolras, as much as he resented himself for it, played the game well enough to buy out about a third of the decent properties and counterattack any desperate trade offers and subsequent accusations that he was being a hypocrite, as well as call out anyone on their cheating and give them a strong lecture in reply.

Bossuet always got sentenced to jail.

But it was Musichetta who played to crush them all into the ground. She was a natural at the game, strategizing better than the likes of Éponine or Jehan; she knew when to trade what with whom, knew when to buy and when to mortgage, only to be back with all properties plus hotels in practically seconds. When anyone refused to concede, she knew how to get inside their heads and make them break, to the point where someone would let out a cry of torment and heave the game board across the room—and she did so with a smile.

Why any of them kept playing the game when they were ultimately reduced to such tyranny and shame, they didn’t know. Most of the time, they chose not to question it. (But only most of the time.)

“ _Feuilly_  ,” Cosette said with a clench of her jaw, “I can see you stealing  _again.”_

Feuilly scowled. “As if you didn’t shuffle the cards to your liking.”

“I didn’t! Courfeyrac shuffled the cards.”

Courfeyrac gasped. “Oh, thanks for throwing me under the bus!”

“Well, you  _did_  shuffle the cards, and I saw you looking at them and organizing them before the game started.”

“You’re the reason I’m in jail!” Bossuet cried, pointing a finger at Courfeyrac.

“You’re in jail because Éponine wouldn’t give you her Get Out of Jail Free card,” Courfeyrac sneered.

“Every man for himself,” Éponine grumbled, downing the rest of Grantaire’s bottle of whiskey. She swayed a little as she held her hand out to Combeferre, but it was hard to determine whether that was because Joly drove The Mystery Machine a bit too unsteadily or because she’d had more of Grantaire’s drink than he had. “Gimme three houses, banker man.”

“’Ponine , you can’t afford three houses.”

 _“You_ can’t afford three houses. And you wanna know something? I think Feuilly’s pretty fucking noble for stealing from the bank. I can’t afford three damn houses, but my brother pays a thousand dollars to buy an  _arcade_ specifically made-up for him just because he wants the customers of his non-existent businesses to play racing games all day and eat their non-existent weights in Doritos? Well, I want three houses for my  _castle_ , and NONE of you are invited.” She leaned across the board to steal the houses Combeferre kept a not-so secure guard on and placed them atop her knee. “Fuck the rules! My kingdom has no rules! I’m a free woman!”

“Hear hear!” Enjolras shouted with a wild gleam in his eyes. He slammed his fist down, causing both the board and Marius to jump.

“I’d like to buy three houses as well, actually.” Musichetta’s cool words and smooth smile caught everyone’s cautious attention, setting them more on edge than they had been for the past twenty minutes. As Combeferre handed her three houses, Musichetta locked her gaze onto Éponine, who paled, her previous drunken riot immediately dissipating from existence. She dropped her gaze to her knee and covered her stacked houses beneath her hand, as if that would protect her in the end.

And it most certainly didn’t. Another twenty minutes later and Marius had huddled himself in the fetal position in the passenger’s seat, Cosette had left the game to calm him down, Feuilly and Grantaire had been kicked out of the game for stealing too much and for too drunken, vulgar words, Gavroche had gone bankrupt for buying an imaginary theme park next to his arcade, and Enjolras had to quit the game to pace around the room, muttering his past protests to himself to calm himself down. Only Musichetta, Courfeyrac, Éponine, Jehan, and Bahorel remained. (Bossuet had given up trying to get out of jail, and Combeferre had long ago given up on the game of Monopoly altogether.  _Family fun my ass_ , he often thought to himself as he watched his friends tear each other apart.)

“You’re gonna lose this time, ’Chetta ,” Bahorel snickered, placing a hotel on one of his properties.

Musichetta seemed amused at the very suggestion. “Oh, am I? You wouldn’t happen to be trying to overcompensate for something, would you?”

He grinned. “Don’t even try to act like you’ve got this in the bag. I own half the board. There’s no way you’ll beat me.”

She said nothing, but merely watched her properties with a smile and a steely gaze, preparing them for battle.

“Please.” Courfeyrac gripped Combeferre’s arm, an anchor against a sea of terrible investment decisions. “Gimme a loan, I swear I’ll pay with interest! I know I can win this! I’ll give you my shoes!”

“Why would I want your shoes?” Combeferre sighed, wishing that the game had ended the moment it started.

“Well, they’re nice shoes. And your shoes—"

"Are  _what?_  What's wrong with my shoes?"

"Nothing! They could just... do with a bit of an upgrade is all..."

Combeferre frowned at him. Courfeyrac sighed, pouting as he handed over his money and curled into Bossuet's lap.

"Éponine," said Musichetta, "trade me your light blue properties for my orange ones."

Éponine's froze. For a moment, she didn't speak, gaping at Musichetta like a deer caught in the headlights. "But... what?"

"She wants to trade with you ’Ponine," Grantaire whispered, earning himself a slap to the chest and a very heated, " Yes, I  _know_ that," in reply.

Musichetta tilted her head, waiting with the gentlest of smiles. "Well?"

Éponine hesitated. "I... no." She stared at Musichetta, almost in horror. "I know what you're doing! You're trying to trick me! You're trying to make me think that I'll gain something from trading for your orange properties, but I won't, and then you'll crush me! Well, I'm not buying  _any_ of that shit!" She waved her light blue set in front of Musichetta's face, then snapped it back, tossing the cards behind her as Grantaire cheered her on. For the first time during the entirety of the game, she found herself able to look Musichetta directly in the eye with the confidence of a Monopoly champion. "I'm onto you, ’Chetta."

Musichetta narrowed her eyes. "Are you, though? Are you really?"

The confidence deflated slightly, but Éponine tried not to let on. As Bahorel rolled the dice, she began to drain Grantaire's second bottle of whiskey, ignoring his drunken protests.

Jehan fell into bankruptcy not too much later and left the game to comfort Courfeyrac, whose own beer bottle accompanied his apparently permanent pout. Almost immediately after Jehan's loss, Musichetta placed a hotel on top of both boardwalk spaces, and then Éponine rolled a two, landing her on the very last space of the game. The chorus of despair that sang throughout The Mystery Machine was almost as loud as her own cry of anguish and swear words.

"You should have traded with me, darling," Musichetta sighed without a trace of remorse, collecting Éponine's money and mortgaged properties. Éponine scowled, crawling up beside Enjolras in the dinette and folding in on herself.

She groaned into her knees, " _I was so close!_ ” and did not come out of her shell for quite some time.

"Don't worry, ’Ponine ! I shall avenge you!" Bahorel cracked his knuckles and grinned. He tossed the dice into the air, rolling a four and landing on one of Musichetta's orange spaces. "No big deal. I can spare a couple hundred bucks. Here you are,  _mademoiselle_."

As Musichetta reached for the money, she grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him forward. He let out a yelp of surprise.

"You want to give up," she murmured, her voice still like the tender sigh of spring, but her grip did not loosen. "You're going to lose, anyway. You. Are. Weak. Give up now."

"Your mind-fuck tactics won't work this time, ’Chetta. You're the one who's bound to give up. This is just an attempt of control through terribly-masked desperation."

"Bahorel," Bossuet hissed, trying to telepathically tell him that he was treading on dangerous waters, waters from which he may never see the light of day again, but Bahorel wasn't looking his way, and Musichetta had already sunk her claws in him.

"If my ‘mind-fuck’ doesn’t work on you, then why is your pulse speeding up?"

Bahorel opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again when words refused to come.

Musichetta grinned. There was a second where she paused to look to Bossuet, whose expression was pitying. _Spare him_ , his gleaming eyes said, _at least a little bit. He's just a boy._ She chuckled to herself, because they both knew that she was unable to make that kind of a promise in the midst of such an adrenaline rush, and then leaned over Bahorel, whispering words so softly and so quickly that he almost missed them, except for the fact that no one existed who could misinterpret her power-hungry remarks. The color quickly drained from Bahorel's face but he remained completely still, the gentle rush of verbal wounds flowing through his ear till finally, as expected, he crumbled.

There were shouts of terror as Bahorel tore away and broke down into shambled agony, the last remaining hinges of his willpower snapping in two. The bank was the first to be trashed, colorful money flying everywhere while Combeferre ducked beneath the table. Grantaire cleared the empty bottles of beer and whiskey away before Bahorel's rage could turn them into the ammo with which to target his anger, and the others jumped back, pulling themselves as far away as possible. Bossuet scrambled toward the end of the RV with Musichetta, hand in hand.

"You couldn't have gone at least a little bit easy on him?"

Musichetta yelped, dodging one of the die, but was overall entertained. "Where's the fun in that?"

"I wouldn't know. You're the only one who truly likes Monopoly."

She laughed and he rolled his eyes, and Bahorel punched the wall, and Joly screamed, wondering what the hell was going on, and everyone yelled for Joly to pull over, please, for the love of God, before Bahorel hurt himself or The Mystery Machine. When they'd stopped beside the highway, along the edge of a forest, Bahorel stormed out the door, the damned board game and its pieces in tow, and he threw the board game into the forest with all his might. The game pieces were next to meet his wrath, soaring through the air as he hurled them as far as they would possibly go.

"FUCK THIS! TAKE YOUR FUCKING MONEY! TAKE YOUR FUCKING DARTH VADER! THIS. IS. BULLSHIT." He let out another tormented roar and ran, bound for the forest.

"Bahorel, where are you going?!" Jehan shouted.

"I NEED TO PUNCH A TREE!" His figure disappeared through trees and the darkness, but his yells were almost as thunderous as if he were still standing there, beating up on the RV and cursing gibberish in his fit of rage.

After a moment, everyone else removed themselves from their hiding places, gazing at the damage around them. The silence felt fragile, and when Marius finally broke it, The Mystery Machine practically let out a sigh of relief.

"Why do we even play that game?"

(This was possibly one of the most profound questions in all of history; no one had an answer, and they never truly would.)

"Hey. Hey!" Joly disentangled himself from the driver's seat, racing outside. "BAHOREL YOU BETTER FIND MY FUCKING GAME, THAT SHIT IS A COLLECTOR'S EDITION!"

 

In the end, Musichetta made it up to them all—Éponine and Bahorel, most especially—by treating them to a midnight run of milkshakes and fries, and to the combing of Éponine's hair and tending of Bahorel's scraped knuckles. As she placed kisses to the sides of their foreheads and soothed them to sleep, Monopoly felt like nothing more than a battle long-lost to the wear of time and Musichetta's quiet lullabies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Short interlude chapter! I wanted there to be a small chapter of something before I jumped into D.C. (especially since I'm still figuring out what to do there)
> 
> \- Thank you for all of the wonderful support! I'm so overjoyed that you all like this story.
> 
> \- On tumblr, I track the tags #manicpixiedreamfedora and #five time Grantaire, for anyone who may be interested in seeing me post updates on the story as I write each chapter. For some reason, though, I’ve noticed that the #five times Grantaire tag doesn’t include every post I make, which annoys me to no end, but I haven’t the faintest clue what to do about it.


	5. soft revolution by stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they visit Washington D.C., and Grantaire and Enjolras visit each other's worlds.

They arrived in Cherry Hill Park, the closest campground to D.C., a little after midnight. Grantaire had finally convinced Feuilly that he truly did appreciate the delicacies of a fine automobile and had taken the wheel of The Mystery Machine off of Éponine’s frankly exhausted hands. She’d been paying her dues to Bahorel, who refused to drive for the next three days at least. (He put the blame on “Marius-induced trauma,” though he looked much less threatening toward Marius now that he’d had a cheese steak and did actually enjoy it.)

Grantaire sat over the driver’s seat, his feet in the passenger’s and a children’s book of Éponine and Cosette’s in his hands. It was something about fairylands and magic and queens and wyverns, and while that may have held Grantaire’s attention on a normal day, it was night and—most importantly—nothing about this trip had so far been normal. From his perch in the driver’s seat, he could just make out the back of Enjolras’ sleeping figure in the pull-out bed on the opposite end of the RV, curled up into Courfeyrac’s side like a cat.

So the very embodiment of the gods was a snuggler. Grantaire tried not to smile wider into his book.

He failed miserably.

The strange thing was, he didn’t know where he currently stood with Enjolras. Enjolras had _complimented_ him, and sure, it had been nice to hear such words at first, but the feeling had worn off quickly, replaced with more annoyance than any sort of pleasantness. No doubt it was reluctant and as odd for Enjolras as it seemed to Grantaire, but still, he had said words that were uncharacteristically kind, and that made Grantaire feel both a mix of joy and disgust—disgust at Enjolras for pitying him, as well as at himself for feeling that joy at the same time, because it was obvious that Enjolras only meant his compliment out of the sake of forced or desperate kindness.

But still.

His gaze flew past words of a young heroine’s journey, over and over again, until he’d realized that he’d been reading the same paragraph for the past ten minutes and promptly shut the book. He curled up into the comforts of the bright green driver’s seat and tried not to think of what it would be like to have Enjolras tucked beside him.

 

Stepping foot on the historical and patriotic soil of Washington D.C. almost gives Enjolras a heart attack.

Or that was what Grantaire figured it was, anyway. (Maybe it wasn’t a heart attack so much as a strange combination of sudden, awed jumpiness, but he couldn’t think of another way to describe it, other than perhaps in colors of bursting gold and flowing red, white, and blue. But Grantaire was without any of his paints and any means on which to use them, so heart attack it was.)

The funny truth of the matter was that the city felt like Enjolras—radiating energy and practically demanding a brighter tomorrow. People swarmed the reflecting pool and took pictures every other second at each monument; Grantaire doesn’t understand why The Washington Monument was so noteworthy, finding it just a massive phallic symbol, but he was a little more impressed when they visited the Lincoln Memorial. The marble president towered over them, not quite judging them but maybe not quite approving of them either, which would be understandable. If Grantaire were president and had just learned of a group of scallywags’ near-traumatic game of Monopoly, he probably wouldn’t have much faith in the future generations of America either. (Not that Grantaire had much faith in them before, anyway.)

But for the most part, Grantaire couldn’t think of much to remark against. If anything, the memorials and statues of the people of history gave Grantaire pause—he finds himself wondering of the lives of these famous ghosts, how they were people fighting and dying for what they believed in, and how Enjolras wasn’t really that different. The idea of Enjolras as the symbol for tomorrow, like the people one reads about in history books, all because he’d died so passionately and so honorably was a thought too terrible to bear, and so, after a while, Grantaire decided to excuse himself and wait for the others outside, ignoring the slight scowl on Enjolras’ face at the sight of his departure.

Enjolras loved D.C., but Grantaire resented it. The city left him with an unsettled feeling of nausea. The image of Enjolras’ name etched in stone on some plaque popped up into his mind every time he so much as glanced at Enjolras—which was why he eventually stopped looking at Enjolras altogether.

They sat in the café of the Smithsonian Castle, munching on chips and apple slices and whatever else Cosette had packed for them all. She sighed at Grantaire when he pulled his hip flask from his back pocket, but she’d been aware of his strange demeanor all day, so her eyes only flash the words _Don’t cause a scene, please_ , before wordlessly handing Gavroche his soda.

“We’ll go to the Library of Congress now, yeah?” Enjolras practically jumped in his seat, almost mirroring Gavroche—who’d had his third soda that day and was on a bit of a sugar high—or Courfeyrac—who hadn’t had any soda but seemed to make his own boundless energy every time he breathed. (“I’m a walking plant,” he’d said proudly when Joly had made such a comment.)

“Cool your jets, Speed Racer. I need sustenance,” Feuilly said, happily accepting the smashed sandwich Cosette gave him.

“Well, hurry, would you? We still have to see the Capitol, and the White House, and more of the Smithsonian—” Enjolras surely would have went on about seeing every blade of grass on the White House lawn if he’d had the chance, but sadly, such a chance was stripped away the moment Éponine stuffed a roll into his mouth.

“There’s also a carousel in the National Mall,” Joly said, grinning. “We can at least squeeze in one carousel ride, can’t we?”

“Don’t forget the gardens! I saw them with my family when we came here years ago,” said Bossuet, looking up from examining the pack of jelly beans Cosette had brought him to glance at Joly. “They were beautiful, though not as beautiful as you.”

Blushing, Joly’s grin became blinding.

“I’d like to see visit a cemetery, actually,” Jehan said. “I need inspiration.”

“Making out with Courf above a bunch of dead presidents inspires you?” Combeferre remarked, raising a brow.

Jehan smirked. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”

“Can I get an ‘AMEN’?” Courfeyrac shouted, pumping his fist and simultaneously drawing the attention of other visitors, some of whom did give him an Amen, although they probably wouldn’t have if they’d known just what they were Amening.

“Fine, fine, fine.” With a wave of his hand, Enjolras nodded. “If we hurry, we can go to the Arlington Cemetery after the Library of Congress. Perhaps we ought to stay here an extra day…”

It was then that Grantaire felt the familiar nausea—the alcohol, excessive heat, and the idea of visiting the homes of more ghosts suddenly became too much all at once. Dizzy, Grantaire excused himself yet again, rushing out of the doors of the Castle. Cosette and Jehan’s concerned calls after him were nothing more than ringing in his ears.

He bent over the flowers of the garden, leaning on his knees, his head swimming in fog. There was something incredibly metaphoric in the situation; him, dry-heaving into the garden of one of the most historic buildings in the country, but he would think more on that metaphor later, when thinking was an ability he was capable of.

He expected the hand on his back. He didn’t, however, expect that hand to belong to Enjolras.

“You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?” he said, clearly straining to keep the disappointment from his voice.

Grantaire took deep breaths, dabbing sweat from his brow. “Call it my _Chicken Soup for the Soul_.”

Enjolras said nothing, waiting patiently for Grantaire to pull himself together and stand back upright. When he did, reaching for his hip flask, Enjolras snatched it out of his hand, twisting off the cap and dumping what was left into the bushes. He shoved the flask back into Grantaire’s hand and handed him a bottle of water.

“Did you just dump my booze onto Washington soil?” Grantaire snickered, taking a sip of the water. “That has to be a crime in some part of this town.”

“You’ve been acting strange today,” Enjolras said abruptly, setting his jaw. “Stranger than normal.”

“Oh, cheers.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’m not, as we both know.”

“Why are you acting like this? Is this because of what I said in Philadelphia? Did I offend you somehow, or are you just so opposed to anything I say that you refuse to acknowledge my compliment?”

“ _I don’t need your pity!_ ” Grantaire spat, louder than he’d meant. A family a few feet away hurried off toward the castle, hopefully not to complain about the two men bickering and near-vomiting in the illustrious gardens of the Smithsonian.

Enjolras looked struck. “You think I was just _lying?_ ”

“Well, why wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t lie. You know that.” Enjolras frowned, staring at the bottle of water Grantaire was half-crushing in his hands. “Don’t you think you’re good?”

“I’m an artist. I don’t think anything I do is good.” _And neither do you, for that matter_.

For a moment, the look Enjolras gave him _was_ pitying, or perhaps sympathetic. Grantaire really didn’t know the difference. “Well, I think you’re wrong. You’re incredibly talented, and not just as an artist. You know much more about art than I do,” Enjolras offered. “And you can dance better than I.”

Grantaire snorted. “Now I _know_ you’re pitying me.”

“Boys.” Musichetta—having spent the past ten minutes admiring the architecture of the Castle—snuck up behind Grantaire, patting him on the shoulder as she slipped by, heading for the building. “You’re attracting attention.”

A security guard had popped round the corner, attempting to appear casual as he watched them from a distance. Enjolras didn’t need any excuse to get himself banned from certain historical properties, and while Grantaire didn’t much care about getting himself banned from anywhere, save perhaps a bar, the heat was starting to get to him again. They headed back for the Castle entrance, but only at the doors did Enjolras come to a sudden stop.

“Come with me to the Library of Congress,” he said, and then looked like he might have regretted suggesting such a thing, only to appear to reaffirm his suggestion, all in a matter of a few seconds.

“Wouldn’t you be dragging us there, anyway?”

“No—well, yes—but I mean, come with _me_ , let me show you around the building.”

Grantaire wanted to smile, but his head was still a little too foggy. “It’s not much of a tour if the guide’s never even seen the place before.”

“Then it’ll be an adventure, and isn’t that what this whole trip is about? Two weeks ago, I thought I’d be spending today writing my next speech for our upcoming rally. Instead I’m in Washington D.C., all because of you, and you’re avoiding me, and we’re supposed to be on vacation from our normal routines, which includes speeches and protests and arguing with each other. I’m here and it’s all your fault, so you’re going to let me show you around the Library of Congress whether you like it or not.”

Now he _had_ to smile, because Enjolras was ever the optimist, even when claiming to be on vacation from _being_ the optimist. “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into. If you’re going to tell me the history of a 200-year-old pen or quill or whatever that Thomas Jefferson once used to write out his grocery list, I’m not going to be silent about my complaining.”

“I wouldn’t imagine it any other way,” Enjolras sighed, holding open the door for Grantaire, who sipped his water to calm the pounding in his chest that surely wasn’t from a lack of hydration.

 

Perhaps the term “library” in Library of Congress was a tad misleading.

The place was fucking huge.

Built like a shrine to worship the tomes and history locked within, The Library of Congress was a cathedral of books preserved behind marble pillars and beneath the magnificent artwork along the ceiling.

Combeferre looked like he might have started to cry.

They had been there for over an hour and a half, and of course, Grantaire still complained, but even his comments lacked their usual cynicism. Portraying indifference was difficult when Enjolras gaped at every book, nook, and cranny—especially so when Enjolras gazed through the windowed doors of the Reading Rooms and pouted because he lacked the right access to go inside.

And when he fervently explained the brief life of each and every yellowed piece of paper lying in glass cases… Well, Grantaire couldn’t help but snicker and think of how right he’d been about Enjolras making an excellent tour guide.

“Oh, goodie,” he said with a sigh, rolling his eyes away from the collection of 18th-century documents and toward the next room with another collection of 18th-century documents, whose purpose was only to drive Grantaire to complete and utter boredom, or so he was convinced. “More books.”

“You’re full of shit,” Enjolras snickered, tying his hair into a loose ponytail so he could kneel down at the bottom shelves.  “Even you can’t find this stupid.”

“Well, I do,” Grantaire retorted, thought he sounded like a child and he knew it.

“Oh, sure. Whatever you say, R.”

While his eyes roamed along the bottom shelf, captivated by the books at his feet, Grantaire looked to the ceiling. The architecture in the Library was beyond phenomenal; the cathedral-like dedication etched in even the smallest of marble stone carvings, the artwork adorned along the ceiling and walls as a token of what made the country so proud— _or so Enjolras would say_ , Grantaire thought. For a split second, he imagined Enjolras carved in the stone up at the top of the pillars and thought that—if Enjolras hadn’t wanted to rebuild the decadent system with his every being—maybe truly being a statue in the Library of Congress would be the perfect job for him: To guard the precious pieces of America’s history for the rest of eternity, because that really was what the Library was for, wasn’t it?

_Keep your books, Enjolras. Art does a lot more than collect dust for a living._

Grantaire took a few steps forward, staring at some of the art trapped in the dome ceilings up rooms ahead.

 _But then what am I?_ he thought after a minute, bitterly and with little remorse. _If Enjolras is a statue, then I’m the same as I am now. A fucking tourist._

In that moment, he may have felt more hopeless than in any other moment of his life, including the times when he’d woken up in alleys, covered in his own vomit, or the times when Enjolras looked on at him with disgust at one of the meetings at the Musain because he’d shown up as a drunken, beaten fool.

(A _tourist_ , complete with the visor and the fanny pack and even the clichéd failure of trying to pose with the Leaning Tower of Pisa by “pushing it” when you were really _so far_ off the mark. This was a new low.)

“God, I could live here.”

Enjolras’ voice brought Grantaire out of his spiral of despair. “And here I thought your one true love was your country,” he joked, though the room had become a little too crowded and a little too dark a little too quickly.

“The country knows The Library of Congress well. They’re buds. It’s cool.”

Grantaire snorted. “How poetic.”

“Yes, well, I’m no Jehan.”

“Thankfully, or else Courfeyrac would eat you alive.”

“Not that Courf doesn’t try.” Enjolras, finally, got to his feet. Funnily enough, he looked—for once—content with himself and the rest of the world. “Are you alright? You look upset.”

“I’m not upset.” Grantaire grinned wryly at him. “But I’ll admit, when you’ve seen one piece of parchment with the signature of a long-dead president—whose penmanship could have really used some work—you’ve seen them all.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes, but his pleasant manner didn’t fade. “Do you know why I love it here so much?”

“Because you’re dull as fuck?’

“Because I’m one day, one of those ugly pieces of parchment with the shitty signature is going to be _my_ shitty signature—although, I like to think my calligraphy is a little clearer.” Enjolras grabbed Grantaire’s shoulder, and Grantaire almost laughed. Enjolras was bouncing out of his skin just by being in the presence of dead people’s possessions. It was almost enough to make Grantaire forget about his painful epiphany. “I’m inspired here, R. What inspires you?”

 _You do._ “Nothing inspires me. You know that.”

“But I don’t believe it. Not today, anyway. I can’t possibly believe that you can walk around one of the most powerful cities and not be inspired.”

If it were any other time, in any other place in the whole wide world, Grantaire would have told him to give up, because he wasn’t inspirable and no city could do a thing to change that.

But this was Washington D.C., where Enjolras would one day live and command and reform the world. And maybe, just maybe, amidst all its history and time and wear, something about the city inspired him to say something out of his comfort zone.

(Not that he’d _ever_ admit something like _that_ to Enjolras.)

With a finger pointing to one of the mosaics along the building, Grantaire said, “That inspires me.”

“The wall?”

“ _No_. The artwork.” He looked over at the wall, feeling a little annoyed for having let himself answer Enjolras’ frankly cheesy question. “It’s awesome, _OKAY?_ ”

Enjolras burst out laughing. “You’re humiliated because you gave a genuine answer to my question!”

“Fuck you, I’m leaving.”

“No, wait!” Enjolras reached out for Grantaire’s arm as Grantaire turned away. “I’m done laughing. You’re ridiculous, but I’m done laughing.”

Grantaire said nothing, mainly because Enjolras’ hand was still on his arm, and to say something would shatter—as Joly called it—“The Glass Bubble of Weird Lovey Feelings” that he’d found himself in.

“Right. So the artwork inspires you. I suppose I should have figured that.” Enjolras let go of his arm, and now that Grantaire was back in reality, he found himself able to look at Enjolras again. “How about this: You give me another half hour here, and then we can go to any art museum you’d like.”

That sense of reality was fleeting. Grantaire was certain he’d misheard, or else, perhaps the world’s demise had begun in the matter of a strange sentence. “What?”

“You do go to art museums, right?”

“Well, I—Of course, I do!”

“Good. Then take me to one.”

Grantaire was gaping, and he knew it, but it seemed he couldn’t stop no matter how hard he tried. “But… why?”

Enjolras smiled coyly, shrugging. “You let me show you my world. Now show me yours.”

Grantaire blinked and shut his mouth. Enjolras smiled brighter.

“Ready to move on?”

“… As ready as I’ll ever be.”

They walked forward, into the next room of books and mosaic archways.

 

Now, the National Gallery of Art. _That_ was more his style.

Situated within the National Mall, the National Gallery of Art housed some the most remarkable collections of art in the world, ranging from as many eras and countries as there were—apparently—books in the Library of Congress. The Gallery was separated into two buildings: The West building, which held the European masterpieces belonging to such artists as Vermeer, Rembrandt, van Gogh, and da Vinci, and the East building, the home of the modern and contemporary works of Picasso, Warhol, Matisse, and Pollock, to name just a few.

And, to Grantaire’s joy, it was free.

For the next two hours, he was a tour guide for Enjolras—a title that didn’t make him feel any better than being the “tourist” to Enjolras’ statue, but he was able to live with it, at least. Even here, it difficult it was to maintain a sense of indifference, because _this_ was his sanctuary, a place beyond the images of paintings he found in search engines or in books he would check out from the library as a child. _Lavender Mist_ , as well as most of Pollock’s work, made him remember how he felt when he decided to be an artist, because Pollock had been the main contributing factor. _The Feast of The Gods_ made him feel like drinking. He pictured the women in _Café du Dȏme_ having the same personalities as Cosette and Éponine. _Joseph of Egypt_ made him snort, only because it looked like Joseph was standing with so much sass; _Look Mickey_ made him think of Bossuet; _Ginevra de’ Benci_ made him feel a lot of things, and _Apollo, the Muses, and Mars: In Praise of Tasso_ made him think of the rest of Les Amis, cramped in their crappy bus with board games and frozen yogurt. The Gallery was immense and full of the painted life he wanted to portray in his own paintings—the spirit of something wild and reckless and swimming in color filled him, as art always did and in ways that alcohol never could. (Although, when they were combined, it was quite a sensation.)

 “Sure,” he’d explained to Enjolras as they moved past _Portrait of a Lady_ , “they place pieces in museums and make them seem so formal and pristine, but do you think van Gogh bothered to care about formalities? He had his own shit to deal with. In my opinion, most of these artists and painters and sculptors were all drunk on the world. Sometimes, it made them worse off than others. Art is filled to the brim with the pain and suffering and the passion that was caged inside their artists. There’s nothing formal about it.”

“Are you saying we should release all the art into the world like they’re frogs on frog dissection day at a high school?”

“Don’t be silly. Paintings don’t have legs.”

Of course, Jost Amman’s _Apollo_ was like looking into the very portrait of Enjolras, but Enjolras never noticed.

“Do you have a favorite?” Enjolras asked as they finished gazing at the art in the West Building for the second time, just in case there was a piece they’d missed.

Grantaire shook his head. “It’s kind of like picking a favorite one of our group. Can’t be done.”

He was too busy staring at _The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun_ to notice the way Enjolras was staring at him, just as he’d been too caught up in the art to truly notice the way that Enjolras had been watching him all day, smiling as Grantaire had continuously lit up with excitement throughout the Gallery.

“You really do care a lot for them, don’t you?”

Grantaire turned away from the painting. “Well, yeah,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “They’re the only family I’ve got.”

(It suddenly occurred to Enjolras that maybe Grantaire’s dispassion for everything didn’t equal _everything_ , and when Grantaire decided to do or say something that showed how much he loved his friends, Enjolras needed to stop feeling so surprised.)

“I’m sorry I never realized.”

Grantaire shrugged. “It’s okay. I suppose we can’t always help when we’re completely, idiotically, mind-bogglingly oblivious.” He brushed past Enjolras with a smirk and added, “I think the gods will spare mercy on you—only on the condition that you treat me to ice cream.”

Enjolras groaned, but said nothing. It was the least he deserved.

 

After three scoops of ice cream each and an obscene amount of toppings (“How can candy be obscene?” Grantaire asked as Enjolras scowled at the cookies and crumbled-up chocolate bars and sprinkles and chocolate sauce and overall _sugar_ that Grantaire had put into his bowl of rocky road; “I don’t know, it just _is!_ ” had been Enjolras’ most intellectual reply.), Enjolras received a text from Combeferre that they had returned from the cemetery and the gardens and were heading back toward the National Mall.

After once extra scoop of ice cream (“One can never have too much ice cream, just like one can never have too much alcohol.”; “Yes, you _can_. It’s called alcohol poisoning.”), Grantaire and Enjolras left the Gallery, both feeling a mix of satisfaction and a little disappointment, though Enjolras was the only one who didn’t understand why.

“There you are!” Bossuet waved the two of them over as they walked toward the carousel outside of the Smithsonian Castle. Neither of them was surprised to find Bahorel, Jehan, Courfeyrac, and Gavroche having the time of their lives atop their chosen decorated horses, screaming the clichéd phrases of cowboys into the Washington air.

“You got ice cream?” Feuilly said, frowning at the near-empty bowls in Enjolras and Grantaire’s hands. “Lucky.”

“You’re not seriously going to pout until we get you some ice cream, too, are you?” said Enjolras.

“Well, if it works, then of course I am!”

“How were the cemetery and the gardens?” Grantaire asked Éponine and Cosette, who’d snuck up beside him and snatched the two remaining cookies from his bowl for themselves.

“Charmingly poignant and poignantly charming,” Éponine replied. “At the cemetery, Jehan recited Byron and made out with Courfeyrac, who did obscene things to statues, which terrified Marius because he was convinced they were all Weeping Angels and wouldn’t look away till Cosette started making out with _him_ , and then Joly disinfected everyone with Purell when we left. Gav was disappointed there weren’t any ghosts or zombies.”

“I think Jehan was a little disappointed about that, too. The gardens were beautiful, though. Bossuet made out with Musichetta and Joly there,” Cosette said. She grinned up at Grantaire, leaning on his arm. “And how was _your_ day?”

“Meh,” Grantaire replied, smiling wickedly at the two of them. “Just okay.”

“‘Just okay,’” Éponine repeated, shaking her head, and then said in a light sing-song voice, “I call _bullshit!_ ”

“We want _every detail_ ,” Cosette demanded, and Grantaire had to bite down on his lip to keep from laughing at the wild look in her eyes.

“We didn’t do it in the bathroom stalls of the Library of Congress, if that’s what you’re thinking happened.”

“Well then, what _did_ happen?”

Grantaire paused. Behind Éponine, Enjolras spoke heatedly with Musichetta about how the carousel’s admission was completely overpriced, but as Grantaire watched him, he noticed the way Enjolras’ attention would divert every other split-second to the Capitol building far off in the distance. Suddenly, he could see a million different things all at once: Enjolras campaigning for office, sitting in a room with a bunch of stuffy bureaucrats, making his words heard; rallying the people together, lifting up their song with only a megaphone and his voice—and this time, his death wasn’t in Grantaire’s vision at all. If Enjolras managed to put the rest of the government to shame and change the country, then Grantaire would be in the chanting crowds, looking on from behind thousands of people.

For that minute, Grantaire didn’t mind being a tourist so much.

It took him another second to realize that Cosette had repeated her question, and when Grantaire tore his gaze away from Enjolras and returned to the real world, he finally gave her an answer.

“Something… wonderful.”

Enjolras looked to the Capitol and Grantaire looked to Enjolras. There was no doubt in Grantaire’s mind that this would be just the first of Enjolras’ many visits to Washington D.C.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I'm SO sorry that this took so long!!!! I went on vacation a couple of weeks ago, and while it was wonderful, it completely screwed me up fanfic-wise. Not to mention, there's like, a million things kind of happening all at once right now... but I digress. I hope the amount of ExR in this chapter made up for my lateness.
> 
> \- I hope the relationship between Enjolras and Grantaire isn't too odd???? Like, for the sake of the road trip, I picture them relinquishing some of the disdain and bitterness in their relationship/friendship, more so on Enjolras' part, because Enjolras is such an idealist. (Though I don't really know if that makes any sense. Basically I'm trying to say that I want a mostly happy ExR story rather than a mostly angsty ExR story.)
> 
> \- Most of the artwork mentioned is on display at the National Gallery of Art, though there were a few pieces I chose that weren't, but I needed them in the story regardless. (For instance, "Look Mickey" isn't on view currently, but I needed to write it like it was simply so that I could say that it reminded Grantaire of Bossuet. Because when I looked at it, I immediately thought of Bossuet. And Courfeyrac, for some reason.)
> 
> \- Also I don't know much about art so I hope I described it decent. (I feel like that's what I'll mention at the end of every chapter, that I don't know much about [insert subject here] and that I just write and hope that I did okay with it.)
> 
> \- The book the Grantaire is reading at the very beginning is called "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making" by Catherynne M. Valente. It's one of my favorite books ever, and I really like the idea that Grantaire reads children's books in his spare time.
> 
> \- On that note, I also have decided that Eponine and Cosette brought along a miniature library of books for the trip, just in case. I think they'd also loan them to their friends with due dates and everything.
> 
> \- Your comments and support have been wonderful and make me smile whenever I see them. Y'all are darlings xxx


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